Florence kills 5 people in North Carolina

In the town of Hampstead, rescuers going to a heart attack call Friday morning found their way blocked by fallen trees. When they arrived home, the woman was dead, said Chad McEwen, deputy director of Pender County.

The fourth person who died was a man from Lenoir County who was connecting a generator, said Governor Roy Cooper's office. Another county man who monitored his dogs outside was killed in what his family thought was a wind-related death on Friday morning, emergency officials said.

Florence was walking Friday night until Saturday, trapping people in flooded houses and promising days of destruction and human suffering.

Storm surges, strong winds and rain are turning some cities into rivers – and the storm is expected to spread to parts of the Carolinas next weekend, hitting the same areas again and again.

Billy Sample, a resident stuck in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, said Friday night, "The storm has not been as bad as it is today." The house is turning more violently than when A look is past. "

Sample stated that when he looked outside his home, which is about 1000 meters from the beach, he saw rain accumulating on the street and what appeared to be a storm surge rising on the road.

In the besieged city of New Bern, rescuers had ripped off more than 200 people from the rising waters in the middle of the morning Friday, but about 150 others had to wait for the conditions to worsen and that a wave Storm reaches 10 feet. That number had dropped to 40 later in the day.

Main developments

• the location of Florence: At 11 pm Friday, the center of Florence was moving from west to southwest through South Carolina at 5 mph, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. The center was about 20 miles north-northeast of Myrtle Beach. A gradual weakening was expected on Friday night, the hurricane center said.

• No electricity: There were 788,916 homes and businesses without electricity Friday night, according to the North Carolina Emergency Management Agency. In South Carolina, the storm has shut down about 130,000 customers, according to Kim McLeod, of the Emergency Department of South Carolina.

• Record bursts: Wilmington Airport recorded a gust of 105 mph – the fastest measured since Hurricane Helene passed through in 1958, the National Hurricane Center said. Later on Friday, a gust of 68 mph was measured at a Wrightsville Beach station near Wilmington.

Rescues and narrow escapes

Total precipitation for the storm will be similar to hurricanes Dennis and Floyd in 1999, said Chris Wamsley of the National Weather Service.

"The only difference is that at the time, it was within 14 days," he said. With Florence, "we see the same amount of rain in three days".

One of the rescuers in New Bern was Jason Weinmann, a retired sailor who bought a troop carrier at a government auction.

He picked up 10 people on a race and took them to a shelter. Jennifer Morales, 20, said that there were 3 feet of water in her house.

"It was pretty bad, we did not know where to go," she said.

Another woman who was rescued by another group in New Bern told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" that she and her family thought they would be safe in their brick house and heard that the storm had been reduced to a category 4.

"At around 11:30 am, midnight (12am), the water entered the house and slowly came in but stabilized and continued to rise," said Annazette Riley-Cromartie.

She, her husband and three children rode into the attic for a while, but the winds screamed and the family descended into a room on the floor.

In the meantime the rescuers, they heard neighbors calling for help.

Her husband went to see if he could help them, but the water was high, she said.

"It's the worst feeling in the world to hear people scream for help and you can not do anything," she said.

Finally, a citizen rescue team came with a boat.

Whitewater rescue teams from outside the state helped local rescuers evacuate people whenever conditions allowed. A Maryland team contributed about 40 rescues to New Bern from Thursday, said Mitchell Rusland.

In Belhaven, the Pungo River hit the city, crashed against houses at height height and higher on Thursday and early Friday, Amy Johnson 's video showed.

A terrifying night

At Morehead City, Brooke Kittrell flew over the storm Thursday and Friday with her boyfriend aboard their moored boat, hoping it would not come off and slap something.

She was able to stay awake all night, holding the broken dock lines in howling winds. But at times, she thought they would not survive, she told CNN.

"I have sincerely cried," Kittrell said. "I was born and grew up here and have gone through every storm for the last 30 years, but this one seems to do more damage than expected."

On Friday morning, the shore was flooded and buildings were damaged, in a video that she posted on Facebook.

Authorities in several states have declared the state of emergency, including in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Maryland, where coastal areas are still recovering from summer storms.

Florence is one of four named storms in the Atlantic. According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm will cross northern South Carolina, become a tropical depression, and then turn north toward the Ohio Valley.

As he moves near Ohio and West Virginia, he will become a remnant. Then it will head north-east in the middle of next week on a trail to the Atlantic Ocean, near Nova Scotia, where there will be an extratropical wind with high winds.