erosion. it s a serious concern. thanks craig. he s in wilmington north carolina which is inland from where hurricane florence came ashore about 7:15 yesterday mourn morning. rebecca, you have hundreds of thousands of people who sought shelter in red cross shelters. in south carolina we have 5500 people who sought shelter. here in south carolina it s raining a lot. there s a lot of storms and winds going on. the storm is slowly approaching. we re encouraging people to stay in doors and stay away from windows because this storm is coming. rebecca, we keep asking and we re hearing about people
down 100-year-old oak trees. the trees come down and they bring the power lines with them. that is going to be the case for days that they ll be without power. power outages, fallen trees, blocked roads, the trail of destruction this storm left has been wide. the rain has continued for the past 30 hours. the winds have died down. we ve got about 100,000 without power in south carolina. we re still getting this storm. south carolina, some of these
the power is out to this entire city. 775,000 people across the region without power. that number could grow in the coming days. it s going to be difficult for power crews because there s so many downed trees. getting the lights back on is going to take several days if not week. the trees have sliced through many homes. that s another issue. it s not just the rain, but the wind and aftermath. we ve got five deaths attributable to the storm including in wilmington, north carolina where a tree came down on a home and killed a mother and infant. i want to go to matt bradley. he s headed to columbia, south carolina which seems to be a big
this is something else that concerned officials there for sometime. you can t see it now, but about a half mile from me up the beach is an earth mover. they re actually moving along the beach and moving sand around to try and prevent what s going to happen in about two hours. as i ve been on tv, this surf is getting rougher and rougher. it coming higher and higher. we re about three hours from high tide. in north carolina you have barrier islands, but here in south carolina you don t have that. this stuff is going to come on shore. i m going to show you in front of me. this is on the beach in myrtle beach. there are signs that say don t go further than that because this is where they protect the water from coming on board. they try to prevent the beach
towns are lower. you re in a coastal town. you re at slightly higher elevation. that kind of damage hits a place like wilmington that isn t going to flood like other places. you know in this part of the country there are rivers that flood in normal rain stormins. that s what we re looking for. sure. these are people bracing for catastrophic flooding. i talked to my folks the last hour, they live in columbia. it s raining lightly. there have been folks in the northeast part of columbia who already lost power. as you said, ali, a nasty thunderstorm in south carolina can create flooding in low lying areas. another problem is beach erosion. the beaches there, as well, the winds you know.