High Drama in the Carolinas
As many had feared, Hurricane Florence has made landfall in the Carolinas, with the hardest hit areas being in most of the coastal region of North Carolina.
There are some amazing photos and videos coming out of the Carolina coast as a result of the storm, including a video from YouTube that captures a canopy at a BP gas station being blown away by the wind, and numerous photos of homes and businesses in Wilmington – a town not far from South Carolina’s Grand Strand – being destroyed. Below is the video of the canopy in full detail:
The scene in the town of New Bern – perhaps best known as the birthplace of Pepsi – is even worse, as Florence has brought on utter devastation in that area, including flooding.
Millions of Carolinians were left without power as a result of this storm. As of now, although most of that power has been restored, there are still 300,000 other areas that have been left without electricity according to Duke Energy. And as of this writing, at least 17 people in total are dead as a result of Florence’s landfall. And the trouble is just beginning as a result of fears such as landslides and inland flooding.
In the case of the latter, roads all over North Carolina and parts of South Carolina have been flooded, causing them to be closed by the NCDOT and SCDOT respectively. The former advising travelers not to be traveling on those flooded roads. This makes the flooding situation in both states rival that of Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
Moving on to relief efforts, organizations like Samaritan’s Purse and the American Red Cross as well as major companies like PepsiCo in upstate New York are pouring in money to help hurricane victims, and the death toll will hopefully stabilize. Remember, when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, more than 1,800 people were killed.
