NEW BERN, N.C. (WCBS 880/AP) -- While the remnants of Florence have begun to disperse, residents in the Carolinas and Virginia are still being evacuated as rivers continue to rise.
The storm that claimed at least 26 lives as of Tuesday and an untold number of homes on its slow march across North Carolina, inundating city after city: Wilmington, New Bern, Lumberton.
It's been a stressful now almost week for people who left their homes along the Carolina Coast to get out ahead of Florence. For folks from the Wilmington area, they still don't know exactly what state their houses is in.
Eileen and Pat Scanlon, originally from Hicksville Long Island, moved down to Leland near Wilmington in retirement. Pat, a former fire chief, had some perspective as he and his wife stayed at a pet-friendly hotel in Durham.
"There's an Outback down the road that delivers. We are next to a Red Lobster, yea, we're really roughing, it's really tough. Considering what everyone else is going through we are very lucky," he said.
Wilmington is still mostly cut off from the rest of the world, WCBS 880's Mike Smeltz reported. There is one road that opened up around midday Monday, but as the Cape Fear River continues to rise it is not clear whether that road will still be free and clear for the rest of Tuesday.
Eileen Scanlon says they've spoken to some of their friends who stayed in Wilmington during the storm, and the news isn't good.
"Everybody down by us, it's devastating. We see the pictures. We are talking to people. It's devastating what they are going though," she said.
Now the suggestion from coastal residents from officials is to not go back home.
Authorities are warning that by the time the Cape Fear River in Cumberland County crests Tuesday at 62 feet — 27 feet over its flood stage — it will threaten to swamp anything within a mile on either side of it. Its tributary, the Little River, is expected to flood, too.
But Tony from Jacksonville, North Carolina is making a go of it. He gassed up his RV that's pulling two motorcycles -- a back up plan for him and his wife in case the road flooding is too much for their RV.
"The area we live in we don't know if the houses are there or what, we'll find out when we get there," he said. "I'm hoping that nothing's wrong but I got a lot of trees around my property and with the ground being so saturated they could fall down and damage stuff I got around the house. Like anybody else you hope nothing's wrong but you don't know until you get there."
More than 7,000 people were ordered to evacuate by Sunday afternoon. But many, weary of a storm that's lingered on and on, did their own rough calculus of the odds and decided to stay.
Military trucks in rural corners of the county barreled down dirt roads quickly becoming mud pits. "Please go," soldiers asked stubborn residents along the massive river that curls downstream through small towns, farms and rural mobile home parks and into the city of Fayetteville.
"I want to make sure those citizens realize the decisions they're making," said Lt. John Savage, who commands the team that knocked on doors to talk with those staying behind. "We have thorough conversations with them to let them know the gravity of the situation they're in."
Over the weekend, a military truck rolled down the mucky lane to Kevin Blades' house 20 miles upstream from Fayetteville, near where the Cape Fear and Little rivers meet. Savage said there is particular concern about this area. Six horses were drinking from floodwater already pooling on the front lawn. Power had been out for days. The dirt road to the house was so soggy, the truck got stuck in the mud and Blades and a neighbor had to tow it out.
Blades informed the soldiers he planned to stay anyway and not to worry because he had an escape plan in mind. "If I have to," he said, "I'll ride the horses out of here."
The soldiers left, Blades played cards, the rain poured on, and the river rose.
State officials have also been monitoring dam safety in cooperation with local authorities and say there has been at least one dam breach so far, with no homes affected. But there have been several other locations of concern and false alarms about dam failures that have caused panic.
According to data submitted to the National Inventory of Dams for this year's deadline and obtained by The Associated Press, the state has 1,445 dams rated high hazard out of about 5,700 dams total, ranging from large federally owned ones to small private ones. That hazard classification does not indicate the likelihood of failure — just that any failure would be likely to cause the loss of one or more human lives.
Of those high-hazard dams, 185 had conditions of poor or unsatisfactory during recent inspections, the data show. And many of those dams were in areas that have been inundated with water.
Ahead of the storm, workers with North Carolina's Dam Safety Program identified vulnerable structures, contacted dam owners and operators to call attention to the threat and asked them to consider lowering impoundment water levels to temporarily increase storage capacity prior, Bridget Munger, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Quality said.
Dam safety personnel have also been deployed to the state Emergency Operations Center since before the storm, Munger added.
State Emergency Management Director Mike Sprayberry said Monday that there had been one dam breach in Brunswick County. He said no homes were affected in the inundation area.
On Sunday night, an Associated Press reporter was with a U.S. Army swift-water rescue team in Fayetteville when a call came over the radio about a dam failure in Pinehurst, which turned out to be a false alarm. Then another call came in reporting another dam breach.
Soldiers who had been resting on cots starting donning boots, helmets and life vests, and a team deployed toward a nearby fire department. About halfway there, the call was canceled — another false alarm.
A Facebook post claiming a dam in Hope Mills, a suburb of Fayetteville, had failed caused trouble there Sunday night, Mayor Jackie Warner said.
"It created a panic because people thought the dam had broken, and they didn't know which way the water would go," she said. Residents started calling asking if they needed to leave their homes, she said.
The dam held up just fine.
Rumors also spread Sunday night in nearby Hoke County about a dam break. Mandatory evacuations were ordered because of flooding at a lake, but the dam wasn't breached, emergency management coordinator Andrew Jacobs said. The evacuation order was lifted Monday afternoon.
In McLaughlin Lakes, a subdivision immediately next to the lake, most declined to evacuate.
"It was an overreaction, don't you think?" Jeff Konopka asked his neighbors.
"Very much so," said Kim Santiago, who has lived beside the lake for 24 years and has seen the dam overflow in numerous storms.
Two of North Carolina's high-hazard dams are at Duke Energy's Weatherspoon Plant in Robeson County, an area that has been swamped with water.
One is at a cooling pond and the other at a coal ash pond. The dam at the coal ash pond was found to be in poor condition during an inspection last year, according to the data.
Both structures were performing well and no problems were expected, Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said Monday.
Catastrophic dam failures are infrequent, and age is a leading indicator of dam failure, with the exception of seismic or weather events, a 2008 Congressional Research Service report found.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gave a "D'' grade to the state of the country's dams in a 2017 report, noting the average age of the dams is 56 years old. The ASCE estimated there are more than 2,000 "deficient high-hazard" dams lacking investment in repairs and upgrades.
Mark Ogden, a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, said states have made significant strides in improving dam safety in recent years. But he said rising numbers of people living downstream of old dams, new dam safety technologies and other factors mean lots of upgrades are needed.
"In general, dam safety has improved tremendously over the years but there's still a long way to go," Ogden said.
Meanwhile Tuesday, Michael Jordan announced that he is donating $2 million dollars to assist residents affected by Florence. The former Chicago Bulls star said the destruction caused by Hurricane Florence to his hometown of Wilmington prompted him to act quickly.
Jordan told The Associated Press on Tuesday that "I felt like I had to act in a sense that this is my home."
The six-time NBA champion and Charlotte Hornets owner contributed $1 million each to the American Red Cross and the Foundation For The Carolinas' Hurricane Florence Response Fund.
The 55-year-old Jordan still has family and friends in coastal North Carolina. He says he watched the devastation caused by the hurricane on television and has touched base with them to make sure they were safe.
(© 2018 WCBS 880. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
