HARDEEVILLE, S.C._Torrential rain battered North Carolina on Sunday, leading to fears of flooding as the remnants of Hurricane Matthew continued to wreak havoc despite the storm's having been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.
Officials said Matthew had caused at least 15 deaths in the United States, including seven in North Carolina. The storm caused hundreds of deaths in Haiti last week.
Officials said the North Carolina deaths involved drivers or their passengers who entered flooded roads.
The storm was expected to churn eastward off the coast of North Carolina and continue to weaken into Monday. But officials warned there are plenty of reasons to remain concerned.
The unofficial rainfall totals were staggering: 18 inches in Wilmington, 14 inches in Fayetteville and 8 inches in Raleigh, the Associated Press reported.
"We will not see the rivers peak possibly until Monday and Tuesday. Our models show very, very dangerous conditions as those rivers go over their edges," North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said Sunday morning. "This storm is not over for North Carolina."
North Carolina rescue workers have made nearly 900 water rescues, McCrory said, including 200 people from Pinetops, N.C. Some people had clung to trees or the tops of buildings to escape the floodwaters.
Private energy companies and electric cooperatives in North Carolina reported about 750,000 customers without power.
In South Carolina, Matthew smashed into the coast 40 miles northeast of Charleston, becoming the first storm to hit that state since 2004.
Many coastal areas remained without power Sunday. Interstate 95, the East Coast's main artery, was reopened Saturday after a brief closing, but gas stations and restaurants along the route remained closed.
Local officials requested that an evacuation order continue in four coastal and lowland South Carolina counties, including Beaufort, the county that includes Hilton Head.
In Hardeeville, cars filled with tourists in Hilton Head T-shirts gathered around plastic-covered gas pumps, waiting for the pumps to turn back on.
Thomas Burly, 30, sat in the back of his white Ford pickup with three friends, all of them evacuees from the storm that struck their homes on Hilton Head Island.
When they had to flee, they first traveled to Asheville, N.C., on Thursday. A room cost $100. By the next morning, the hotel was charging $340 for the same space.
Burly and his friends relocated to Atlanta, where they spent Friday night, and finally moved Hardeeville on Saturday, the inland town where deputies from the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office staffed a checkpoint and turned away everyone except first-responders.
In addition to the seven deaths in North Carolina, there were four reported in Florida, three in Georgia and one in South Carolina, the AP reported.
