CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ The North Carolina death toll tied to Hurricane Matthew is now 14 people, with three missing and 282,000 without power. And state officials Tuesday warned of another round of flooding in a half dozen additional counties.
Gov. Pat McCrory noted in a news conference that a man was also shot and killed Monday by a state trooper in an altercation related to flood rescue work. The trooper is on administrative leave, which is standard in such instances, while the shooting is being investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation, officials said.
Investigators say the confrontation took place Monday night, when two Robeson County sheriff's deputies and a sergeant with the State Highway Patrol were working to rescue people on West Fifth Street in Lumberton. The officers encountered a man who became hostile, then displayed a handgun. The trooper shot and killed the man, whose identity remained unknown Tuesday, officials said.
"It was a unique circumstance of high water and first responders," McCrory said, conceding tensions can run high during disaster situations.
That's one reason, he says, that 24 military police have been assigned to monitor the state's evacuation shelters. "We want to make sure people are safe at the shelters," he said.
Lenoir County and the city of Kinston are under a curfew from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. nightly until further notice.
Nationwide, at least 33 deaths have been linked to Hurricane Matthew and its aftermath, more than one third of them involving people who may have been trying to drive through high waters.
McCrory said North Carolina counties impacted by the hurricane now fall into three categories: Those in recovery, those currently experiencing flooding and those anticipating flooding. The rising rivers include the Tar, Cape Fear, Lumber and Neuse.
State officials expect conditions to worsen over the next 72 hours in nearly a half dozen other counties, which face the risk of more flooding due to rising stream, river and creek waters that are increasing the risk of dam and levee failures.
One such structure in the Moore County community of Woodlake near Vass, where state officials have ordered an evacuation in anticipation of flooding along Crane Creek and the Lower Little River. Crews worked until about 2 a.m. Tuesday to get sandbags in place to reduce the threat at Woodlake Dam, officials said. However, the threat is real enough that a warning has been issued to up to 60 people who are refusing to leave their homes.
"If you do not get out, you will pay for issues (encountered) to rescue you," said McCrory. "You'll need to be in extreme harm for us to rescue you."
State officials say federal disaster relief has been approved for 31 counties, and more will be added starting with Sampson County.
McCrory said he toured some of the worst hit areas Monday and that it is clear low-income people were among the biggest victims of the hurricane.
"Within a minute, people lost all their possessions and their homes. I saw stuff that will stick with me the rest of my life," McCrory said, referring to his encounter with an 80-year-old flood victim, as she sat in a shelter Monday. "People so poor, they have nothing left and nothing to return to."
The three fatalities added in the past day included an instance in which a man was killed in Wake County when his vehicle was struck by a tree and two others (in Wilson and Cumberland counties) where cars were submerged.
Those two deaths make a total of 10 people who were killed when they found themselves trapped in a vehicle and surrounded by flood waters, state officials said.
"If we say water is coming and we say do not drive through it," McCrory warned, "do not drive through the barricades. Do not go through the water. We are not messing around. And we do not want to put people at risk to save you. Too many people have died."
So far, 2,000 people have been rescued from the flood waters in North Carolina, which have been steadily rising since Hurricane Matthew dumped two-days of rain on most of the state's 100 counties.
The National Weather Service reported 18.38 inches of rain in Elizabethtown in southeastern North Carolina, and 14 to 16 inches were dumped in other areas of the coastal Carolinas. The Sandhills region, which was still recovering from flooding rains a week earlier, was among the hardest hit areas of the state.
The top wind-speed recorded in southeastern North Carolina was 86 mph at St. James Plantation in Brunswick County.
The flood damage drew comparisons to Hurricane Floyd, which left $3 billion in damage, destroyed 7,000 homes and killed 52 people in 1999. The after-effects of Hurricane Matthew will be felt for the rest of the week, state officials warn, as Eastern North Carolina communities brace for downstream flooding.
Both north and southbound Interstate 95 remain closed between Exit 13 and Exit 73 due to flooding, and a stretch of Interstate 40 is closed near Benson, officials said.
On Tuesday, state officials reported flood waters were rising in Greenville, where an evacuation is in progress. The city's airport is currently surrounded by water, officials said.
Counties approved for the disaster declaration include: Beaufort, Bertie, Bladen, Brunswick, Camden, Carteret, Chowan, Columbus, Craven, Cumberland, Currituck, Dare, Duplin, Edgecombe, Greene, Hoke, Hyde, Johnston, Lenoir, Nash, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Pasquotank, Pender, Perquimans, Pitt, Robeson, Tyrrell, Washington, and Wayne counties.
