First Hurricane Florence-related deaths confirmed
Hurricane Florence kills mother and baby, father hospitalized in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Hurricane Florence claimed its first victims Friday afternoon, when two people died after a tree fell on their home in Wilmington, North Carolina, police said.
The victims were a mother and infant, police said on Twitter. The father sustained injuries and was transported to New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington for medical care.
Earlier Friday, the Wilmington Police tweeted that they were responding to this incident.
Two other individuals were also killed in the midst of the storm, officials said.
A person in Lenoir county died while plugging in a generator, according to a news release from North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s office.
"Our hearts go out to the families of those who died in this storm," Cooper said in the news release. "Hurricane Florence is going to continue its violent grind across our state for days. Be extremely careful and stay alert."
A fourth death was confirmed by an official in Pender County, North Carolina. An unidentified woman suffered a medical-related fatality in the midst of the storm as emergency responders were unable to reach her due to a downed tree, according to Public Information Officer Tammy Proctor.
The powerful Category 1 storm is making its way south along the Carolina coast hours after making technical landfall early Friday morning. As of 2 p.m., the storm was about 35 miles west-southwest of Wilmington, N.C., and about 35 miles east-northeast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
Forecasters said catastrophic freshwater flooding is expected well inland over the next few days as Florence crawls westward across the Carolinas all weekend.
The National Hurricane Center said Florence will eventually make a right hook to the northeast over the southern Appalachians, moving into the Mid-Atlantic states and New England as a tropical depression by the middle of next week.
Gov. Roy Cooper said Friday that Florence is "wreaking havoc" and he’s concerned "whole communities" could be wiped away.
"Hurricane Florence is powerful, slow and relentless," he said. "It’s an uninvited brute who doesn’t want to leave."
Preparing for the worst, about 9,700 National Guard troops and civilians were deployed with high-water vehicles, helicopters and boats that could be used to pluck people from the floodwaters.
More than 600,000 people had already lost power by 1 p.m. Friday, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety reported.
Duke Energy said in a tweet that they anticipate 1 to 3 million outages across the Carolinas, adding that restoration in the hardest-hit communities could take weeks.
Officials said some 1.7 million people in the Carolinas and Virginia were warned to evacuate, but it’s unclear how many did. The homes of about 10 million were under watches or warnings for the hurricane or tropical storm conditions.
Fox News’ Lissa Kaplan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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