Page 640 - Flash Flooding News Today

Of resources that others do not. so now we want to tell part of the story that has been going on all day. dianne gallagher is in new bern, north carolina. and what weve seen is that the bigger cities have been okay so far. but it is the smaller places where there is really concentrated pain and diane, you got a personal taste of that today. thank god your okay. tell us what you saw today. >> reporter: chris, so weve been going out with these rescue groups throughout this kind of -- first of all ...

Of rain from raleigh durham all the way down to morehead city and another intense band from wilmington going over to lumberton. two weeks to get this to move inland and move on out, were going to see this big moisture fetch produce these bands of significant flash flooding. down on the coastline, you are going to continue to see that storm surge at high tide cycles. >> high tide is about 2:00 a.m. local time here. a lot of people are going to have to go through the night hoping they dont have an...

Flooding because those records are going to really shatter everything that has come before. it will be about 20 feet above their normal levels on the cape fear river up north where the tributaries are and where it is more low-lying and where people live near the tributaries and they are fearful tonight about what will happen at high tide when the water, as weve been telling everybody all week, has absolutely nowhere to go but into the homes and into the streets and elsewhere. now here in wilming...

Worst of the storm surge for those locations. in addition to that, again, weve been talking about the flood threat. its tow fold. you have the rain coming down from bob and the water thats coming up from below. thats the storm surge. the short-term problem is the flash flooding thats going to take place. the long-term problem would be the tributaries. all of that water has to go somewhere. it goes from those tributaries and in bays and inlets into the rivers and creeks and streams. were expectin...

Officials say is on the way. jillian: a lot of people evacuated. 700,000 without power. hundreds of rescue operations. connell: a terrible story with that tree coming down and we hope for the best for the next few days. jillian: we have you covered, tropical storm florence creeping slowly inland, the downpours expected to continue for days to come. connell: much of the region under flash flood warnings, rescue workers preparing for potentially catastrophic floods. special team coverage continues...

Besides moving inland, communities not used to handling so much rain in the short time and there is the potential of flash flooding far inland. there are four storm related fatalities over the bridge in wilmington, mother and her infant died during the storm when a tree fell on their home but a little bit inland in north carolina two men in their late 70s died in separate incident. one was electrocuted when talking to plug-in extension cords in the driving rain. another died after heavy wind kno...

Good. how bad is the flooding down there? >> its pretty bad. blue creek road is totally flooded and theres a white car you can see, and then its not that bad going down there. >> whats your name? >> jonathan. >> are you from here? >> yeah. >> are you okay? your house flooded? >> no. >> all right. thank you. be safe. and, bill, what were following is the volunteers in the boats because we want to put in. they got a call of elderly trapped in a structure and this is one of the areas we see the coa...

One of our aldermen trying to get back into town and he says the roads and interstate are closed. bill: you cant go a city block here in wilmington without seeing damage. bill, thank you for make it go out here from wrightsville beach and go buy a lottery ticket, okay? i want to go up the coast now, griff jenkins standing by live in jacksonville, north carolina, 55 miles per hour north of here near the new river. how is flooding there, griff? good day. >> hey, bill, you know, the floodings bad. ...

The trees, signs, street signs have fallen over. people need to stay in place. >> my sense is that since mid day saturday wed have better idea of damage inland and athe damage along the barrier islands. when do you think we will have a firm idea as to the damage left behind by florence? >> with the leadership we have, the local government are top-notch. its municipal, county, state, regional, all are just, bill, worldclass individuals and so we will know right away what the damage is and, but it...

Can, we are going to continue to do that through the coming days, all the events that we are seeing now are a combination of either storm surge in those eastern counties or flash flooding throughout the piedmont, we believe that will continue to increase, we want to make sure we are responding as rapidly as possible and ensuring the safety of our citizens so we are attempting to bypass as much traffic out of north carolina as possible and then asking our citizens in those critical regions to sta...