Hurricane Florence Slams the Carolinas

The “Storm of a Lifetime”, Hurricane Florence, was marked as a category 5 for areas around the Carolina coast.

More than one million people had to undergo mandatory evacuation as the storm crept near the East Coast of the United States.

Florence arrived by crossing the Atlantic Ocean.  During this journey, it’s wind speeds decreased and was newly classified as a category 2. By Thursday evening, 13 September, the storm was declassified again as a category 1.

By Friday morning, the town of New Bern, North Carolina was drenched in 7 inches of rainfall and 10 feet of storm surge.

At least twenty-five people have been killed in North Carolina, including a 1-year-old boy who was pulled by the waters and out of his mother’s arms. Authorities ended up finding him in between a car and tree.

In Wilmington, North Carolina, two helicopter flights brought medical supplies. Water and food came in on 20 trucks from Fort Bragg.

“I was not scared of the hurricane because I do not have family down there and it is not close to us. I do not think that Florence caused more damage than Sandy because the death toll for Sandy caused 285 deaths, and Florence is a much lower number at this time,” FAHS senior Anna Koehle said.

“I was not scared of the hurricane because I did not care that much. I am not surprised that another big storm is hitting the United States because there have been much worse seasons of storms than this; it is natural. I do believe that Florence caused more damage than Sandy because we have had so much saturation in the ground already from previous rainfalls that the new water had nowhere else to go,” FAHS junio Nathan Nahrgang said.