Six Dead As Hurricane Matthew Pounds Florida’s Northeast Coast
MEP: Hurricane Matthew reached along the northeast coast of Florida on Friday, with powerful winds, storm surges and torrential rain, leaving six people dead and more than 1 million people without power.
Florida Governor Rick Scott said “This number is going to continue to fluctuate and the greater outages are along the east coast as you would expect. Utility companies are already beginning to restore power in central and south Florida.
The strongest hurricane to menace the United States in a decade had weakened to a Category 2 storm, and it was clear that Florida had dodged some of the worst-case scenarios laid out by forecasters and public officials. Yet the danger wasn’t past: South Carolina was bracing for the storm’s potential landfall there Saturday, and even residents in North Carolina faced a considerable threat.
The National Hurricane Center said Friday that the storm’s center had been “hugging the coast” in Florida as it continued toward Georgia and South Carolina and warned of a surge of up to nine feet that could cause dangerous flooding.
Hundreds of people have already been killed in Haiti and other Caribbean nations due to powerful Hurricane.
Ahead of the storm, more than 1.5 million Floridians were ordered to evacuate as the governor deployed 3,500 National Guard troops to assist in storm preparations. More than 500,000 Florida residents are still in evacuation zones.
