At least eight people were killed in North Carolina and one person was killed in South Carolina by Hurricane Matthew's destructive forces, bringing the storm's death toll to 17 across four southeastern states, authorities said Sunday morning.
Hundreds of flooded residents were rescued overnight in North Carolina and more than two million businesses and homes still without power along the southeastern seaboard as Matthew continued to batter the Atlantic coast with 75 mph winds even as it was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone.
"This is an extremely dangerous situation," North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said during a Sunday morning news conference. "We have neighborhoods underwater. I am praying we don't find people who were swept away."
By Saturday night, rainfall totals were 16 inches in Bladen County, 15 inches in Goldsboro, 12 inches in Lumberton and Smithfield, and 9 inches in Raleigh and Rocky Mount, McCrory said in a statement.
The Fayetteville, North Carolina, Emergency Operations Center said response teams rescued nearly 700 people overnight in the Fayetteville and Cumberland County areas while 503 people were being housed in area shelters. The center said four people were missing in the county. It was unclear if any of the missing people were counted among the dead.
Nearly 815,000 customers across the state were without power, according to the state's emergency management office.
Dramatic video was released of a mother and baby being rescued from a flood-stricken vehicle.
At 8:00 a.m. EST Sunday, the storm was about 60 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and headed northeast at 14 mph, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory.
The center of the storm was set to move south of the North Carolina coast Sunday and well east of the state later in the day as it weakens.
Forecasters said widespread flooding was possible from heavy rain, up to 20 inches, storm surges and high tides along the East Coast.
"We are looking at very significant flooding. Almost every road in the city is impassable," Virginia Beach spokeswoman Erin Sutton told the Weather Channel from the city of almost 500,000 people between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
A state of emergency was declared in the city Sunday morning, and residents were urged to stay home.
Nearly 250,000 power outages had been reported in Virginia by Sunday afternoon, according to utility
companies.
Matthew, which days ago briefly topped out as a ferocious Category 5 storm, made U.S. landfall on
Saturday near McClellanville, South Carolina, a village 30 miles north of Charleston.
Gov. Nikki Haley said Sunday that more than 4,000 people were still in shelters as emergency crews monitored swollen rivers and cleared debris-covered roads.
Five buildings near Myrtle Beach were completely destroyed when a wind- whipped fire consumed the structures Saturday night, according to officials. The residents of the multi-story buildings had already evacuated before the fires, and no one was injured, a statement from the city said.
Damage in the United States, however, was much less than in Haiti, where Matthew took nearly 900 lives. At least 13 people on the Caribbean island have also died from outbreaks of cholera since the storm, and around 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said.
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