Now weakened, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 unleashed torrential rains and powerful winds as it churned slowly north after pummeling the southeastern coast of the United States, killing at least 11 people in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina since Thursday and leaving more than two million businesses and homes without power. Early on Sunday, the storm threatened coastal communities in North Carolina and Virginia, where flash flood warnings were issued and gusts of winds of 75 miles per hour (120 kph) were recorded. “The wind is bending the trees to a 90 degree angle in my backyard, I've lost electrical power in my home and the rain is blowing sideways,” Frank Gianinni, a 59-year-old occupational therapist, said in an email from his home in Wilmington, North Carolina. "I was looking at coming back with chainsaw and a dump trailer. Almost every road in the city is impassable," Virginia Beach spokeswoman Erin Sutton told the Weather Channel on Sunday from the city of almost 500,000 people that sits between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. On Saturday evening, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory had urged residents to stay off roads and sidewalks to avoid "deadly conditions" caused by severe flooding and debris. In Cumberland County, North Carolina alone, more than 500 people had been rescued by crews as of early on Sunday, the Weather Channel reported. The storm centre was about 320 km (200 miles) off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and heading away from land, according to the National Hurricane Center’s Sunday 9pm Irish time (5pm local time) report. The storm was blamed for at least 11 deaths in the United States - five in Florida, three in North Carolina and three in Georgia, including two people killed by falling trees in Bulloch County, the county coroner said. While power was being restored in some areas, 1.6 million people were without power in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia, down Sunday’s peak of 2.2 million. More than a million people in South Carolina and North Carolina were without power, and at least four separate sections of Interstate 95 — the main artery linking the East Coast from Florida to Maine — were closed in North Carolina. The unofficial rainfall totals were staggering- 18 inches in Wilmington, 14 inches in Fayetteville and 8 inches in Raleigh.
The death toll in the United States from Hurricane Matthew rises to 27 with at least five people still missing in North Carolina. Governor Pat McCrory warns that the state's swollen rivers are still rising with flooding continuing to pose threats to life and property this week. The storm, downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone yesterday, moves away from the U.S. coastline on an east-northeast track.