Matthew moves north
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Some of the South’s most historic cities faced the weakening but still powerful Hurricane Matthew as it plowed north along the Atlantic coast, flooding towns and gouging out roads in its path.
The storm killed at least four people in Florida and knocked out power to more than 1 million homes and businesses, even though its strongest winds stayed just offshore.
Matthew was making itself felt in South Carolina Saturday morning. Hurricane-force winds were moving onshore at Hilton Head and Pritchards Island, South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center reported. At least one wind gust of 61 mph was recorded at Beaufort.
More than 150,000 electric customers in South Carolina — most in Beaufort and the Charleston area — were without power Saturday morning.
The Category 2 hurricane will near North Carolina’s southern coast by Saturday night, the center says.
“Now is the time we ask for prayer,” Gov. Nikki Haley said as she finished an update on storm preparations and bowed her head.
Matthew — the most powerful hurricane to threaten the Atlantic Seaboard in more than a decade — set off alarms as it closed in on the U.S., having left at least 300 people dead in Haiti.
In the end, it brushed the heavily populated areas of Florida and raked the Georgia coast, including some of the state’s islands such as St. Simons and Tybee.
Steve Todd defied orders to evacuate Tybee even after the mayor called and pleaded with him to leave. As conditions rapidly deteriorated Friday night, Todd wasn’t sounding quite so bold.
“I’m not regretting staying,” Todd said by phone. “But I’m not going to lie: There’s a little bit of nervous tension right now.”
Todd said he was staying with friends at a third-story condo, which had lost electricity.
“It’s throwing down right now,” Todd said. “The trees are bending over. We saw a bush fly by. It’s raining sideways now.”
In Florida, the storm gouged out several large sections of the coastal A1A highway north of Daytona Beach and had nearly completely washed out the northbound lane for about a mile at Flagler Beach.
“It’s pretty bad; it’s jagged all over the place,” said Oliver Shields, whose two-story house is within sight of the highway.
The deaths in Florida included an elderly St. Lucie County couple who died from carbon monoxide fumes while running a generator in their garage and two women who were killed in separate events when trees fell on a home and a camper.
About 500,000 people were under evacuation orders in the Jacksonville area, along with another half-million on the Georgia coast. More than 300,000 fled their homes in South Carolina.
St. Augustine, which is the nation’s oldest permanently occupied European settlement, was awash in rain and gray seawater that authorities said could top 8 feet.
