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Authorities said five people died on Friday as Hurricane Florence continued to hit the Carolinas with high winds and heavy rains.
A mother and young child were killed when a tree fell on their home in Wilmington, North Carolina; a woman died in Pender County, north of Wilmington; and two elderly men died in Lenoir County.
Florence was downgraded to a tropical storm Friday night, but still suffered 70 mph winds. Authorities warned that up to 50 percent of rain could cause catastrophic flooding next week, with warnings that landslides could occur in western North Carolina.
The center of the storm fell on South Carolina Friday, heading to the coastal city of Myrtle Beach after leaving nearly 800,000 homes and businesses without electricity in North Carolina.
The first confirmed deaths occurred Friday morning, when a mother and child were killed in Wilmington. The father of the child was also injured and taken to the hospital.
Officials from Ponder County said that one woman had died in Hampstead, about 10 miles northeast of Wilmington and two miles from the coast. Collins said the woman called 911 on Friday morning after a medical emergency, but the teams were unable to reach her due to trees falling down the road.
In Kinston, a 78-year-old man was electrocuted and reportedly trying to connect extensions in the rain. A 77-year-old man was found outside his house after checking his hunting dogs, officials said.
Florence landed as a Category 1 hurricane just outside of Wilmington, where winds that blew at 105 mph bent almost every tree. Fifty miles north, in Jacksonville, more than 60 occupants of a motel were forced to evacuate as the building collapsed. Further north, in the city of New Bern, the authorities were scrambling to reach nearly 150 people blocked by the floods.
Forecasters have warned of historic rains along the Carolina coast as the storm heads southwest to South Carolina at only 3 mph. Severe floods in freshwater are expected in the following days, as the region prepares for an extended period of extreme weather.
Donald Trump praised the "incredible work" done by workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and the first responders in the field in an early morning tweet . The president was still facing criticism over his attempt to downplay the nearly 3,000 Puerto Rico deaths caused by Hurricane Maria in 2017, a toll that would have been inflated by his political opponents. Trump reiterated this opinion on Twitter on Friday night, saying the death toll had increased "as if by magic" and that the method of calculating the death toll "has never been achieved with previous hurricanes".
In the streets of Wilmington, residents came out to inspect the damage after the storm's eye passed through the historic port city as debris littered the streets.
The Wilmington storm surge was to rise 4 feet (13 feet). The next big city in Florence, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was hit by rain and gusts all morning long. The storm was to reach the city, which has 30,000 inhabitants here at night. Evacuation orders were in place throughout the Carolina coast.
Although the roads in Myrtle Beach remained strangely quiet, the Waffle House, a chain of well-known restaurants throughout the southern United States, remained open, serving an emergency menu. Workers said they would keep the store open even though they lost electricity and suffered minor floods.
In one of the city's low-income communities, Sandygate Village, many residents said they could not evacuate because of the financial burden.
Henry Mitchell, 57, disabled and unemployed, said, "It's too expensive to move to a hotel. I could be outside for days and I can not afford to leave my house behind.
The apartment buildings are just a few hundred feet from the Waccamaw River, which forecasters were waiting to flood significantly during and after the hurricane.
In Conway, about eight miles north of Myrtle Beach, Rocky Session, 27, spent Friday morning making last-minute adjustments to his caravan – a few bars of wood above the windows.
"I feel a little better," he said. "But everything will probably be flooded later today."
He added, "I'm pretty sure my caravan is not going to explode – it's attached – but I'm concerned about the floods."
Session and his wife, Holly Dew, evacuated their one-story home on Thursday and were staying at a nearby hotel. They would have moved further, they said, but Dew's mother, Deborah, is in intensive care at the Conway Medical Center hospital, too sick to move.
About 2,200 patients in seven South Carolina hospitals had already been evacuated.
The storm will be a major test for Fema, a year after the agency was criticized for its reaction to Maria in Puerto Rico.
Approximately 9,700 soldiers and civilians were deployed throughout the region with deep-sea vehicles, helicopters and boats for relief operations.
The National Hurricane Center predicted that Florence will eventually turn north-east over the southern Appalachians, moving to the central Atlantic states and New England as the tropical depression of here the middle of next week.
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