We are getting calls for emergencies. We are not being able to get out while this storm is underway and get to anybody at this time. You guys are waiting on a ride out of here . Yes, sir, as soon as possible. Reporter you had about enough of this . Oh, yes. It will be quiet for a minute and then it just i mean the wind is at 80 Miles Per Hour. Weve got eightfoot swells around our house. It is like were standing on a pier at the beach and theyre crashing on our tenfoot deck. Reporter we are still going to get the worst of it here in myrtle beach sometime in the next few hours, and it is these winds like they were in eastern and northern North Carolina. Theyre going to be with us for a while. Thats where the damage comes from. It is the sustained winds, the rains and the storm surge. I want to go to new bern, North Carolina. Garrett haake is there where theyve been getting rescue calls and Emergency Management and the National Guard have been performing rescues since early this morning. Garrett, what is the situation where you are in new bern . Reporter ali, they are getting new rescue calls but i think not at the pace they were overnight. They got about 500 of those rescue calls and workers were out really at first light this morning in boats and trucks whenever they could to get people out of flooded neighborhoods. Most of the flooding was due to the storm surge, which im pleased to tell you is not nearly as bad as it was earlier. You see some debris behind me. It was pushed up about 11 00 p. M. Last night. When it got to the high tide today, it was not pushed up quite as far. You can see people are outside on bicycles despite the fact were in the middle of a hurricane. Ali, the storm surge has gone down but the wind and rain havent stopped here. Im living about 24 hours in your future. This started raining here about 3 00 yesterday afternoon and it really hasnt stopped since. We have had a little bit of a break in some of those bands, but the rain continues to come down here. 30,000 people in this town, 21,000 of them are without power including us. I think thats going to be the situation here for quite a while. This is a soggy, nasty, rainy storm, continuing here with some of the rescue efforts still underway in scattered parts of the city, ali. Reporter what is causing the rescue efforts . These are people who stayed in and then what happened, garrett, the flooding was more serious than they expected . Reporter everyone we talked to today told versions of the same story. It is basically that, ali, that they did not expect the flooding to be this bad. Lots of folks including one guy who said he lived in the same home for 30 years, he didnt expect it to be like this. People hear that category 1 or 2 and think of it as shorthand and dont worry about the storm surge as weve been talking about for at least the last 24 hours. It is really the wrong way to approach this. The surge can be much more dramatic, particularly communities like this along the river. Im not anywhere close to the coast. This is all river flooding for the most part that has jumped the bank and come into these communities. What you typically see are folks with elderly relatives, pets, little kids, economic reasons that they dont want to leave, and a lot of these folks lost their power overnight, woke up this morning with water coming up to their front door, in their homes and realized they would need the help of the professionals or the highlytrained amateurs like the cajun navy to get out of those homes, get to shelters and to safe places for the next couple of days. Right. You started getting rain there a lot earlier than we did. We didnt get our first rain until late this morning. Thanks, garrett. I want to give you a picture of this. You may be able the see it. The surf is up here now. This is the first time weve seen that in this storm. The surf is up, but if you can see the wind is still blowing in the opposite direction of the surf. So for the moment places like this, inland a little bit from myrtle beach and myrtle beach itself, flooding is not yet the concern, but there are rivers about 15 miles in and when high tide comes in about 11 00 tonight, combined with the fact that this storm will intensify, were going to see that problem. I want to go about 40 miles north of where we are, north northeast, back in to North Carolina, oak island. Thats where mary ann a, how is the situation where you are . Reporter i have been reporting from the ocean side of the island, which is the southern side. I wanted to move north to show you the Intracoastal Waterway behind me. Yad yesterday we were here. This water, this was about three feet lower yesterday than what you are seeing now. It gives you an idea of how high the water got with this storm. We were told with Hurricane Matthew in 2016 it went even higher than this, so it just shows you the extent of what the damage could have been had this storm not turned at the last minute. But residents just beginning to see the damage to their homes now that the rain has died down a little bit. You can see this huge tree fell down in front of the property of a woman named cathie who we just ran into here. Cathie, i want you to tell all of the people watching, how do you think you fared here in oak island . It was looking scary for a while . It was a rough morning, i will say that. The winds were just really awful. It was a little heartwrenching not knowing how bad it was going to get, you know. But i think we did all right. We have a screen out and a fan out, obviously a tree which we hate to look this beautiful tree, and the debris is going to be a mess. Reporter what concerns you still at this point . Are you out of the woods . No, were concerned that we still might lose our power. We still do have power, but we could still lose that overnight, and were also concerned about the high tide tonight which is around midnight i think, 11 30, 12 00 at night. Reporter can i ask you quickly, our garrett saying about many people that decided to stay and now theyre having to be rescued. Why did you decide to stay . We felt very secure in our house. It was only built three years ago. It has highimpact windows, a metal roof and a superior wall system which, you know, rebar and concrete. We felt very safe in the house. When they downgraded a little bit we decides and we did have a hotel room. We decided we could go inland and get stuck and not be able to get back home with inland flooding they were predicting. So we decided to hunker down and just bite the bullet and see what we can do. Reporter thank you, cathie, for talking to us. Sure. Reporter i know you have been through a lot and im happy your home is safe. Stay safe. Thank you. Reporter as you heard, people not out of the woods. This home has power because the power lines are underground, but as we have been reporting more than 600,000 people throughout the state cant say the same thing. Yeah, we have 615, almost 616,000 at our last report in North Carolina. Of course, this is happening on a rolling basis. People are losing power even faster than that, so it is upward of 615,000 in North Carolina. Here in South Carolina we have only had this storm for a few hours. Our last reports are about 80,000 people out of power. I would imagine thats going higher because here in myrtle beach weve still got power exactly where we are, but we know that there are power lines down, there are transformers that have blown, there are power lines that are even burning here in myrtle beach. So were watching that very closely. I want to go to Michelle Grossman who is tracking the storm. Michelle, this is a hard one to understand because normally a storm comes in, it gets the land, starts to move in and starts to weaken. This thing has weakened a bit, it is 75 Miles Per Hour sustained winds but it is still a serious storm and still heading down the coast. Absolutely. It is going to continue to follow that direction, so we are seeing it move south. You are enjoying the calm before the storm. Even as recently as this morning residents were calling officials to see if they could get back into myrtle beach, officials were saying no way, and this is a good reason why. We are seeing this storm move down to the south. We are seeing these changes already with you, and were going to see a rough afternoon and evening overnight in myrtle beach. In terms of radar we are seeing some heavy rain falling. Here is myrtle beach and the center. It is going to move to the west and to the south and we will continue to see the heavy rain falling and strong winds for a duration of maybe 36 hours. We will continue to track that. That pink line a tornado watch for 26 counties. Keep that in mind. I know we talked about that yesterday, Power Outages across the area, and we could see once the sun goes down that could be trouble with tornado watches and tornado what, a tore nade tornado watches and tornados that are spawned. We are looking at very strong winds. We have seen damage in a lot of spots. Of course, North Carolina has been dealing with this since this time yesterday. Now South Carolina is getting in on the action. Ali kind of asked about the path here. So a category 1 storm. It is very rare when a hurricane goes on land it doesnt weaken right away. Usually that friction weakens it right away. As we go towards myrtle beach, still a category 1 storm. So were going to see winds that are 74 Miles Per Hour, maybe even a little higher than that. As we go throughout saturday, this is unheard of as well, Tropical Storm force winds over to columbia. Watch what happens as we go throughout time here. We are not talking about a story that happened yesterday, today, tomorrow, also on sunday. We are talking through tuesday, the remnants of the storm will be affecting the northeast by tuesday at 8 00 a. M. Of course there will be massive cleanup efforts going on here as well. This will be a story that will last for weeks and weeks. Lets talk about the wind gusts. We are talking about up to 90 Miles Per Hour in wilmington. This is afternoon forecast. Myrtle beach where you are, ali, 77milesperhour wind gusts and we will see ones higher than that. We will see additional Power Outages. This is an awesome graph telling you the potential for that. We have seen a lot of that. Where you see the reds and oranges, thats includes myrtle beach as well. Of course, the storm surge has been the biggest story for the past five days and continues to be the biggest story as we go on. So, michelle, to be clear, what is the likelihood or the possibility that this storm does get back out into the ocean and continue down . So weve been watching this. It is so unpredictable, it is moving so slow. When a storm moves slow it tends to wobble back and forth. So there is a chance it could happen. Looking at the latest data, it doesnt look as though thats going to happen, but you know what . It is still going to remain strong even over land. So it doesnt matter much, even if it did go back over the water it wouldnt strengthen that much. It is going to hold on to that category 1 strength for quite a while. Got it. Michelle grossman, thanks very much for this. Sure. Well stay close to you on the updates for this. I want to go to mark who is the chief Information Officer for myrtle beach. Mark, you are on the phone with us. I am standing exactly where i was when you were with me last. What is the situation . Because im on the beach, what is the situation in myrtle beach in terms of power and downed trees and downed power lines . We do have some downed trees, some downed power lines. I think areawide we are talking about maybe 55,000 customers without electricity at the moment, and thats grown over the last couple of hours. It started out at about 16,000. We have some electrical problems. Im not aware of any significant Property Damage at this point, which is a good sign that this storm is not quite what we expected. All week it hasnt been quite what we expected. We are in reasonably good shape. We are hopeful by dawn tomorrow morning we can get crews out and about and survey the damage. All right. As michelle was saying, the storm is a little wobbly, it is hard to know exactly where it is going. Theres some likelihood as weve been looking at new bern and places on the eastern side of North Carolina that these winds and rain, regardless of how strong they are or weak they are, are going to hang around here for a while. This could be a problem for longer than we were expecting. Correct. This may become a flood emergency, not a hurricane emergency. Were concerned about that. Weve seen the large numbers that are projected in terms of rainfall. It will be interesting to see what the actual rainfall totals are, but all of the rain falling in North Carolina and our hearts go out to everybody along the North Carolina coast all of that rain in the next four, five, six, seven days is going to come to South Carolina, ali, through the river systems. Thats just where the water flows. So well get rain. North carolina has gotten rain. We really are concerned about flooding not here at the beach on the coast itself, but inland starting at about the city of conway and moving westward from there. There are a couple of communities lumberton in North Carolina, one of the smaller communities in northwestern orrie county that have not recovered fully from matthews flooding two years ago. We definitely have the flood problem on our radar. All right. Were looking at flooding. We are looking at Power Outages. Mark, thanks very much for joining us. Mark kruea, the chief Information Officer for myrtle beach. Our coverage of Hurricane Florence continues up and down the carolina coast. From myrtle beach, we will be back after this break. You are watching msnbc. Who would have thought, who would have guessed . An Energy Company helping cars emit less. Making cars lighter, its a good place to start, advanced oils for those hardworking parts. Fuels that go further so drivers pump less. Improving efficiency is what we do best. Energy lives here. Improving efficiency is what we do best. Named park in the u. S. Ninetysix hundred roads its americas most popular street name. But no matter what park you live on, one of 10,000 local allstate agents knows yours. Now that you know the truth, are you in good hands . We will, of course, continue to follow the latest on Hurricane Florence, that developing story, but we also have this Stunning Development in the russia investigation. The president s former Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort, who repeatedly said he would never do it, is, in fact, now fully cooperating with the special counsels office. The deal announced this morning in court where manafort stood before the judge and admitted guilt to two charges, conspiracy against the United States and obstruction of justice for witness tampering. He remains in jail for now until sentencing. The Cooperation Agreement with the special counsels Office Coming days before his second trial was set to get under way. Remember, it was just a month ago that President Trump referred to manafort as a brave man for not breaking and talking with disdain about people who he called flippers. So far though today the president hasnt been heard from directly, no tweets so far. His press secretary, sarah sanders, did issue this statement. This had absolutely nothing to do with the president or his victorious 2016 president ial campaign. It is totally unrelated. His lawyer, rudy guilliani, issued a similar sounding statement. Quote, once again an investigation has concluded with a plea having nothing to do with President Trump or the Trump Campaign. The reason, the president did nothing wrong. For more on all of this im joined by ken delaney and at the federal courthouse where he has been all day, along with our new nbc legal analyst, Glen Kirshner in washington, d. C. Is it accurate, what both sanders and guilliani are saying, this has nothing to do with the president , has nothing to do with his campaign . Do we even know what he has to offer Robert Mueller . We dont know, chris, but it is not accurate to say it has nothing to do with the president. The president is the subject of Robert Muellers investigation into whether the Trump Campaign coordinated, conspired with the Russian Election interference. Today it could be the most moment us day yet in the course of that investigation. It began when Paul Manafort walked into a courtroom in that courthouse behind me and uttered the words i plead guilty. Before he did that, the lead prosecutor, andrew wiseman, walked the court through about 40 minutes of all of the illegal conduct that the mueller team has alleged against Paul Manafort, both in virginia and d. C. In the first two rows of the courtroom were filled with investigators and People Associated with the case, a case thats been called a witch hunt by president donald trump, thats been lambasted by trump allies. While Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges, he admitted to all of it, the bank fraud, the tax fr