headquarters in new york, this is nbc nightly news. reporting tonight, craig melvin. and a good saturday evening. we are following two major developing story tonight. in a few moments thomas roberts will have the latest on thursday s shooting massacre at a community college in oregon. but first historic flooding. many parts of charleston are under water tonight. some roads look more like small rivers. more than 20 million people along the eastern seaboard are under a flood watch or flood warning. some communities are expecting epic amounts of rain. 16 inches in some places. this afternoon, president obama declared a state of emergency in south carolina. forecasters say some there could experience a once-in-a-lifetime rain event. we start tonight in greenville, south carolina with kerry sanders. reporter: wide areas of charleston, south carolina, underwater tonight. adding to the relentless rainfall, coastal flooding. with more than 11 inches of rain in the last 36 h
fredricka whitfield is off today. newsroom starts right now. hurricane joaquin now back to a category 4 hurricane storm. drenching rains on the east coast already felt. myrtle beach, south carolina, millions of folks expected to be affected. new video of cars battling flooding in charleston where they already broke the daily record on rainfall. in brunswick county, north carolina, crews spent friday night evacuating people along the coast. let s go live to north carolina. government, pat, mccrory, is speaking about the conditions there. storm activities. i have a great team behind me on stage. i am so proud of the north carolina team in storm preparation and response. we think we have the best team in the united states of america. we are working to the as a team just like we have in the past winter storms. our goals are constantly to be overprepared and underwhelmed. frankly, the good news is that with a hurricane, we are underwhelmed. that s good news for north carolin
five people remain hospitalized at this time. we re waiting for a update from the sheriff. you re looking at live pictures ahead of that press conference in oregon. when that begins we ll bring it to you. i want to go to ashley banfield now. he she has more on the investigation and the people in this story. the nine people that went to school that day and every came home. it is a very difficult story for the very small community here to deal with. in fact, i don t think this will come as a surprise, but just about everyone in this community has a connection to the nine victims one of the most poignant moments is when the national guard commissioned to blackhawk helicopters brought the bodies back from the medical examiner. they landed tenderly on the tarmac. i think my colleague may have put it best when he is said it looked like war just came to roseberg in more ways than one. they were offloaded from the blackhawk helicopters on to gurneys and brought to the waiting vehic
the tuesday shooting in roseberg, oregon, that left nine people and the deadman dead, and the looming weather threat parting parts of the coast under threat this morning. we re still watching the hurricane joaquin and we re getting updates from the bahamas to see just how bad that was. here s joaquin up here. it s finally moving away from the bahamas. it s quickly moving away. so clearing skies there. now, this photo just came out from the coast guard in miami. they re going to be sending up this aircraft, flying to the bahamas. they re going to fly low over all the islands that were devastating to assess the damage. we don t even know how bad it is there until this aircraft gets there this morning. we are watching devastation on the coast from coastal flooding. we re watching significant flooding from rains and storm surge in areas of south carolina. this image came in. this is north wildwood, new jersey. this isn t even down in the southeast. this house last night tumbled