RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Searchers have found two more bodies inside vehicles that were submerged in flood waters in North Carolina from Hurricane Matthew, increasing the toll in the state to 26 dead.

Gov. Pat McCrory said at a news conference Saturday that the victims were found in Cumberland County and Wayne County after flood waters from last weekend’s rains receded.

Flooding triggered by the hurricane has killed at least 43 people in the United States and more than 500 people in Haiti.

McCrory says most of the people killed in his state either drove or were walking through flood waters and were swept away.

The governor says recovery from the flood continues even as waters continue to crest. Only 13,000 customers in the state remain without power. </s> LUMBERTON, N.C./KINSTON, N.C. — Flooding in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew has displaced several thousand people in North Carolina, and authorities were helping more evacuate on Tuesday, Oct. 11, as swollen rivers threatened a wide swath of the state.

Governor Pat McCrory warned of "extremely dangerous" conditions in the coming days in central and eastern North Carolina, where several rivers were at record or near-record levels.

Matthew, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007, killed at least 1,000 people in Haiti last week before barreling up the U.S. southeastern coast and causing at least 30 deaths in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.

McCrory's office said four additional deaths were confirmed on Tuesday in North Carolina, raising the death toll in the state to 18. One person was reported as missing.

An additional U.S. death occurred on Monday night in Lumberton, North Carolina, where officials said a highway patrol officer fatally shot a man who became hostile and flashed a handgun during search-and-rescue efforts in fast-running floodwater.

Nearly 4,000 people have taken refuge in North Carolina shelters, including about 1,200 people in the hard-hit Lumberton area, where the Lumber River had crested at almost 4 feet above the prior record set in 2004 after Hurricane Frances.

Water blanketed the city of 21,000 people, leaving businesses flooded, homes with water up to their roof lines and drivers stranded after a stretch of Interstate-95 became impassable.

"We lost everything," said Sarah McCallum, 62, who was staying in a shelter set up in an agricultural center after floodwaters drove her from her home of 20 years.

State officials are particularly concerned about victims like McCallum, who have no flood insurance because they do not live in areas typically prone to inundation. U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday signed a disaster declaration for North Carolina, which will make federal funding available to people in the hardest-hit areas.

Obama approved a similar declaration on Tuesday for South Carolina, where Matthew made landfall on Saturday. State officials are now urging residents to prepare for potential flooding from the Waccamaw and Little Pee Dee rivers.

About 532,000 homes and businesses remained without power in the U.S. Southeast on Tuesday, down from the peak of around 2.2 million on Sunday morning when the storm was still battering the Carolina coasts.

Matthew dumped more than a foot of rain in areas of North Carolina already soaked from heavy September rainfall. It has triggered the worst flooding in the state since Hurricane Floyd in September 1999, the National Weather Service said.

That storm caused devastating floods in North Carolina, resulting in 35 deaths, 7,000 destroyed homes and more than $3 billion in damages in the state.

In Matthew's wake, officials are monitoring a number of overtopped or breaching dams in addition to the threat of inland river flooding, the governor's office said.

Concerns about a potential breach of the Woodlake Dam, which led to overnight evacuations in the central North Carolina town of Spring Lake, had eased by Tuesday afternoon after it was reinforced with 700 sandbags, but a mandatory evacuation was still in effect for nearby residents.

McCrory warned that the Tar River was expected to crest on Wednesday in Greenville, where a mandatory evacuation order is already in place.

Officials remain concerned about Kinston, where significant flooding was already occurring from the Neuse River, which is expected to crest at about 27 feet on Saturday, just shy of the Floyd record.

Retired construction worker Wesley Turner, 71, said he fled his home near Kinston with his dogs on Friday after his power went out and the water quickly rose to about chest deep.

After several nights in a shelter, he did not know on Tuesday whether he had anything to return to.

"I can't get to my house because it is under water," Turner said. </s> Residents of the southeastern United States ravaged by Hurricane Matthew turned their focus on Monday toward recovery and clean-up, while Haiti started to bury some of its dead.

Officials in several US states warned that deadly flooding could continue as rain swollen rivers crest in coming days.

Matthew, the most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007, was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday after its rampage through the Caribbean killed 1,000 people in Haiti. In the United States, the death toll rose to at least 19 people.

While power was being restored in some areas, 1.6 million people were without power in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia, down Sunday’s peak of 2.2 million. Officials were working to clear streets of downed trees and abandoned vehicles.

With five people reported missing and rivers rising, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said he expected the death toll to rise. Eight people in the state were known to have died so far.

McCrory said several swelling rivers were expected to hit record levels and would not crest for days.

“Hurricane Matthew is off the map, but it is still with us and it is still deadly,” he said.

The National Weather Service said “life-threatening flooding,” will continue Monday over eastern portions of the state.

Many coastal and inland communities remained under water, either from coastal storm surge or overrun rivers and creeks.

All 2,000 residents of Princeville, the oldest town in the United States incorporated by African Americans, were told on Sunday to evacuate due to flash flood risks. The town lies on the Tar River about 40 km (25 miles) north of Greenville.

Several dams have breached in the area around Cumberland County, south of Raleigh, Michael Martin, fire marshal for the city of Fayetteville, said by phone.

Swiftwater rescue teams are still on alert and there have been 255 water rescue calls and 701 people rescued.

In neighbouring South Carolina, a vehicle trying to cross a flooded roadway in Florence County was swept away by flood waters, killing one person, Governor Nikki Haley said.

Jake Williams, a resident of Florence, said on early Monday that his power had been out since Saturday morning.

“Trees are down in every neighbourhood on almost every road,” he said, adding “I am no weather man, but would guess that the gusts of wind were near 100 mph (160 km), and with soggy ground a lot trees couldn’t stand up to it.”

In Virginia Beach, the city said it had received over 33 cm (13 inches) of rain and 55,000 people remained without power on Sunday night. The city said that some 200 vehicles were abandoned and many roads remained impassable.

Norfolk, which declared a state of emergency, said efforts were under way to clear streets of debris and abandoned vehicles with city offices, libraries and recreational centres set to re-open Monday.

Haiti started burying some of its dead in mass graves in the wake of Hurricane

Matthew, a government official said on Sunday, as cholera spread in the devastated southwest and the death toll from the storm rose to 1,000 people.

Authorities had to start burying the dead in mass graves in Jeremie because the bodies were starting to decompose, said Kedner Frenel, the most senior central government official in the Grand’Anse region on Haiti’s western peninsula.

Frenel said there was great concern about cholera spreading, and that authorities were focused on getting water, food and medication to the thousands of people living in shelters. Cholera causes severe diarrhoea and can kill within hours if untreated. It is spread through contaminated water and has a short incubation period, which leads to rapid outbreaks.

The storm centre was about 320 km (200 miles) off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina and heading away from land, according to the National Hurricane Center’s Sunday 9pm Irish time (5pm local time) report.

The storm still packed hurricane force winds as far as 150km (90 miles) from the centre and tropical-storm-force winds 390km (240 miles) away.

US president Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Georgia and Florida, freeing up federal money to help the states repair damaged infrastructure and remove debris.

Mr McCrory said 334 rescue workers risked their lives carrying out 877 rescues overnight. </s> KINSTON, N.C. - Officials in North Carolina said they would go door to door on Wednesday urging people to leave low-lying areas as rivers swollen by rainfall from Hurricane Matthew continue to rise, threatening homes and resulting in more drownings.

Floodwaters have swamped areas across the central and eastern part of the state, forcing more than 3,800 residents to flee to shelters, closing down stretches of major interstate highways and shuttering 34 school systems, North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory said.

McCrory said the death toll in the state had risen to 19, mostly due to drowning. That figure represents more than half of the deaths in the U.S. Southeast linked to the fierce Atlantic storm, which killed some 1,000 people in Haiti and displaced hundreds of thousands more as it tore through the Caribbean last week.

"Do not get near the water," McCrory said at a news conference in Raleigh. "It will kill you."

Matthew's aftermath drew comparisons to Hurricane Floyd, which triggered devastating floods in North Carolina in 1999 and caused more than $3 billion in damages in the state.

In Kinston, where the Neuse River is expected to peak on Saturday just shy of the Floyd record, Mayor B.J. Murphy warned residents on Wednesday not to be fooled by the beautiful fall weather and clear skies.

"We want you out, and we want you out now," he said in an interview on WITN television news. "This is a very dangerous situation."

Kinston resident Toby Hatch, 60, who lived through Floyd and Hurricane Irene, which destroyed his home in 2011, heeded the city's evacuation order this week and headed to a shelter.

"I didn’t really want to leave, but I was already looking at enough water that I was trapped," he said.

Evacuations also continued in Greenville, where the Tar River was 10 feet above flood stage and forecast to crest even higher by Friday. Flooding has forced the city's airport to close and classes were canceled for the week for East Carolina University's 28,000 students. </s> Rising rivers caused more misery across Eastern North Carolina on Tuesday, where the Hurricane Matthew death toll climbed to 18 and residents in shelters feared for their homes.

Major roads were still closed in places, and water rescues continued. There was progress on power restoration, as outages slowly declined to 190,000 from Sunday’s peak of 800,000.

The scale of the disaster was enormous and shifting, as waters rose in some areas and receded in others. Conditions will worsen along the banks of the Tar and Neuse rivers, which will crest in Eastern North Carolina towns in the next three days – almost a week since the hurricane pounded an already saturated state with more than a foot of rain.

Most of the 18 deaths occurred from drowning, as motorists were swept away on flooded roads, Gov. Pat McCrory said in briefings. One man died in Wake County when a tree fell on his car.

“This is terrible news,” McCrory said late Tuesday, warning drivers not to look for shortcuts around roads blocked off because of flooding. That endangers first responders, he said, suggesting that officials would not send rescuers into situations that seemed too dangerous for them.

“Do not go through water!” the governor said. “We’re not messing around.”

More than 2,000 people had been rescued from swift-water teams in the eastern part of the state, mostly in Robeson and Cumberland counties. More than 400 high-water and rescue vehicles had been deployed, and 90 helicopter rescues had been conducted.

During the flooding in Lumberton, a state trooper shot and killed a man Monday night. The shooting happened about 8 p.m. on Fifth Street, where two Robeson sheriff’s deputies were conducting search-and-rescue operations with a patrol sergeant, the State Highway Patrol said in a news release. A man displayed a handgun and became hostile to the officers, the patrol said, and was then fatally shot by the sergeant, who was identified as J.F. Hinson, a 13-year veteran. The man who died was not identified; the shooting is being reviewed by the State Bureau of Investigation.

Elsewhere, Lenoir County and Kinston were under mandatory evacuation orders for residents near the Neuse River. Early Tuesday, officials in Moore County began evacuating people downstream of Lake Surf, because the dam holding back the lake was nearly ready to break, they said. Sandbags were piled at the dam to stabilize it, but the National Weather Service kept a flash-flood warning in effect.

About 4,000 people were in emergency shelters in central and eastern North Carolina – a quarter of those in the Lumberton area.

McCrory said he requested federal assistance for individuals as well as state and local governments for 66 counties. On Monday, 10 counties were approved for individual federal assistance and 31 counties were approved for public federal assistance. Late Tuesday, word came that federal aid would be available to individuals in four additional counties – Bertie, Johnston, Wayne and Wilson. Also, people in Beaufort, Bladen, Columbus, Cumberland, Edgecombe, Hoke, Lenoir, Nash, Pitt and Robeson counties are eligible for federal help.

Water and power returned to most parts of Johnston County on Tuesday, but those on county water service still were under a boil advisory. Johnston County Schools canceled class for students for the rest of the week. Johnston was hard hit, with hundreds of rescues and three fatalities.

The flooding could continue for several days as rivers and creeks swell. The Neuse River crested in Goldsboro on Tuesday night at a record 29 feet, while the Tar River is expected to rise to 35 feet in Tarboro on Wednesday afternoon and 25 feet in Greenville on Wednesday night. The Neuse is forecast to rise to 27 feet on Friday.

At an emergency shelter at Tarboro High School, which housed 140 people Monday night, those who had been evacuated from Princeville and Tarboro along the Tar River worried about their homes. Many had lived there when Hurricane Floyd flooded them out in 1999.

“Not knowing exactly what the next move is going to be, that’s hard,” said Regina Brooks, a 27-year-old Princeville resident who had been staying in the shelter with her 1-year-old and 2-year-old daughters and her mother since Sunday.

Just a few streets away, closer to the river that divides Princeville from Tarboro, emergency vehicles blocked both ends of the bridge that links the two Edgecombe County towns.

But on a warm October day, with clear blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s, many residents walked across the bridge, taking pictures of the swift-moving Tar River and comparing its spillover to Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Rick Page, a former Tarboro mayor who also was a utility director when Floyd spurred massive flooding, said the Tar River was not as high Tuesday as it had been after Floyd. He pointed to a grassy dike on the Princeville side. If the river spilled over the dike, he said, that would mean big trouble for the Princeville residents.

But the people on the bridge watched the water and hoped for the best. </s> TARBORO, N.C. (Reuters) - Floodwaters inundated the historic black town of Princeville, North Carolina, on Thursday, leaving homes submerged to their roof lines as the state’s death toll in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew climbed to 22.

Local residents gather on their front porch as a child shoots a BB gun while they seek refuge from flood waters due to Hurricane Matthew in Lumberton, North Carolina, October 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Flooding from the Tar River had been expected in Princeville, which was founded in 1885 and believed to be the oldest U.S. town incorporated by freed slaves, and most of its 2,000 residents evacuated.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory described a dramatic rise in the water level in the town, long been plagued by flooding and devastated by floods after Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

Areas that had about a foot of water on Thursday morning were covered in up to 12 feet by afternoon, he said.

“Princeville is basically under water at this time,” McCrory told a news conference after flying over the town. “You gotta see it to believe it.”

The governor praised the town’s residents for heeding evacuation orders, saying no one there had died.

However, McCrory announced two additional fatalities after the storm death toll rose to 20 late on Wednesday. The latest victims included someone who drowned in Lenoir County after driving around a barricade for a washed-out roadway. Most of the state’s deaths from the hurricane have been drownings, he said.

“Stay off the roads,” McCrory said. “Stay out of the water.”

More than 30 deaths in the United States have been blamed on Matthew, with a fourth death announced in South Carolina by that state’s governor on Thursday. Before hitting the southeast U.S. coast, the fierce storm killed around 1,000 people on its rampage through Haiti last week.

The recovery effort in central and eastern North Carolina is expected to take weeks or months. So far, the federal government has disbursed about $2.6 million to individual flooding victims and approved $5 million for emergency road repairs. </s> CHARLESTON, S.C./SAVANNAH, Ga.—Matthew was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Sunday, Oct. 9, as it struck North Carolina and Virginia with a diminished yet still potent punch, causing flooding and widespread power outages along the U.S. Atlantic coast after killing hundreds in Haiti.

The most powerful Atlantic storm since 2007 unleashed torrential rains and powerful winds as it churned slowly north after pummeling the southeastern coast of the United States, killing at least 11 people in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina since Thursday and leaving more than two million businesses and homes without power.

Damage in the United States, however, was much less than in Haiti, where Matthew took nearly 900 lives. At least 13 people on the Caribbean island have also died from outbreaks of cholera since the storm, and around 61,500 people were in shelters, officials said.

Matthew continued to threaten coastal communities in North Carolina and Virginia, where flash flood warnings were in effect and gusts of 75 miles per hour were recorded.

"The wind is bending the trees to a 90 degree angle in my backyard, I've lost electrical power in my home and the rain is blowing sideways," Frank Gianinni, a 59-year-old occupational therapist, said in an email from his home in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Forecasters said widespread flooding was possible from heavy rain - 20 inches was expected to fall in some areas - along with storm surges and high tides.

"We are looking at very significant flooding. Almost every road in the city is impassable," Virginia Beach spokeswoman Erin Sutton told the Weather Channel from the city of almost 500,000 people between Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.

Media showed footage from across the region of motorists and passengers sitting and standing on vehicles stuck in rushing flood waters as crews used swift water boats to rescue the stranded. In Cumberland County, North Carolina alone, more than 500 people were rescued by crews, the Weather Channel reported.

At 4:00 a.m. CST on Sunday, the storm was about 50 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in an advisory. The center of the storm was set to move south of the North Carolina coast early on Sunday and well east of the state later in the day as it weakens.

Matthew, which days ago briefly topped out as a ferocious Category 5 storm, made U.S. landfall on Saturday near McClellanville, South Carolina, a village 30 miles north of Charleston that was devastated by a Category 4 hurricane in 1989.

The storm was blamed for at least 11 deaths in the United States - five in Florida, three in North Carolina and three in Georgia. More than 2 million households and businesses were without power, most in Florida and South Carolina.

The storm-stricken stretch of the Atlantic Coast from Miami to Charleston, a nearly 600-mile drive, encompasses some of the most well-known beaches, resorts and historical towns in the southeastern United States. Parts of Interstate 95, the main north-south thoroughfare on the East Coast, were closed due to flooding and fallen trees, state officials said.

Roads in Jackson Beach, Florida, were littered with debris, including chunks from an historic pier dislodged by the storm, and beachfront businesses suffered moderate damage.

Streets in downtown Charleston, known for its historic waterfront architecture, were flooded to the tops of tires on some parked cars.

The National Weather Service said record-high tides were recorded along the Savannah River at the South Carolina-Georgia border, peaking at 12.6 feet, surpassing those from Hurricane David in 1979. </s> FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – When Hurricane Matthew dumped torrential rains on North Carolina, thousands of people found themselves suddenly trapped in homes and cars. Rescuers in Coast Guard helicopters plucked some of them from rooftops and used military vehicles to reach others, including a woman who held on to a tree for three hours after her car was overrun by flood waters.

In another dramatic rescue, a woman with her small child perched on the roof of her car had to be helped to safety as the waters rose around them, underscoring how quickly Matthew wreaked havoc 100 miles or more inland after sparing much of the Southeastern coast the catastrophic damage once feared.

The storm killed more than 500 people in Haiti and at least 18 in the U.S. — nearly half of them in North Carolina. Most were swept away by flood waters.

Gov. Pat McCrory said authorities were searching for five people and feared they may find more victims. The problems were far from over as all that rain — more than a foot in places — flows into rivers and downstream, likely causing days of major flooding in many of the same places devastated by a similar deluge from Hurricane Floyd in 1999.

"Hurricane Matthew is off the map. But it is still with us. And it is still deadly," McCrory said.

Princeville, a town of 2,000 that disappeared in the waters of the Tar River during Floyd, was evacuated Sunday as the river was expected to rise to 17 feet above flood stage by late Monday — a level not seen since Floyd. McCrory expected more evacuations as some rivers were predicted to crest next Friday.

David Bullock's sister called him as he bought lottery tickets to tell him police were knocking on doors saying they had to go. He rebuilt his home after the 1999 flood.

"If I get flooded again, I can't take it. I can't go back and take the expense. If I get flooded again I'm going to say, 'it's yours, I'm gone,'" Bullock said.

More than a million people in South Carolina and North Carolina were without power, and at least four separate sections of Interstate 95 — the main artery linking the East Coast from Florida to Maine — were closed in North Carolina.

The ferocity of the rain caught people by surprise. Ezekiel Crowe escaped the floods in Fayetteville on Saturday with his parents and seven brothers and sisters when a police boat plucked them from an apartment as the waters rose.

"I was scared. I was scared. And I thought, I thought the world was going to end. But it didn't," he said.

In Wilson County, rescuers were called when a 63-year-old woman didn't make it home from work. They heard her cries for help while riding on top of a Humvee, and when they couldn't get her with a rope, a National Guard soldier swam to her, staying until a rescue boat arrived, Emergency Management Director Gordon Deno, said.

Even animals had to be saved. WRAL-TV showed a dog swimming around floodwaters Saturday. McCrory said he and his wife were riveted by the coverage and relieved to find out from the Coast Guard that the dog managed to get into a tree and rescue it.

The rainfall totals were staggering: Nearly 15 inches in Fayetteville and 8 inches in Raleigh. McCrory warned that cities along rivers in eastern North Carolina needed to be prepared for days of flooding. The Lumber River in Lumberton was 4 feet above its record level Sunday afternoon and was forecast to remain there for at least five days.

Shortly before daybreak, the hurricane was downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone. As of 2 p.m. EDT, the storm was centered about 150 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, moving out to sea. It still had hurricane-force winds of 75 mph.

Elsewhere along the Atlantic coast, things were slowly returning to normal. Much of Savannah, which had 17 inches of rain, was still without electricity. About 150 people stood in line for a grocery store to open like it was a Black Friday sale.

Debbie Berta said she waited more than an hour to get propane gas for her grill. She also wanted "bread, potatoes, eggs — and a piece of sanity."

Matthew killed more than 500 people in Haiti last week, plowing into the desperately poor country at 145 mph. The fearsome storm then sideswiped hundreds of miles of the U.S. coastline from Florida through Georgia and the Carolinas, its eye staying far enough offshore that the damage in many places along the coast was relatively modest, consisting mostly of flooded streets, flattened trees and blown-down signs and awnings. A shift of just 20 or 30 miles could have meant widespread devastation nearer the ocean.

An estimated 2 million people in the Southeast were ordered to evacuate their homes as Matthew closed in.

In addition to the eight deaths in North Carolina, there were four in Florida and three each in Georgia and South Carolina. Some were killed by falling trees, others by carbon monoxide fumes from a generator. One 66-year-old man near Columbia, South Carolina, died at a nursing facility when he got pinned under his electric wheelchair in water after the heavy rains.

"People were hit. They weren't hit as directly as we had feared, but it has left a lot of devastation in in its wake. Lives have been lost, property has been severely damaged and there's still continuing risk of flooding going on," President Barack Obama said at a fundraiser in Chicago.

Property data firm CoreLogic projected that insured losses on home and commercial properties would amount to $4 billion to $6 billion, well below Hurricane Katrina's $40 billion and Superstorm Sandy's $20 billion.

Waggoner reported from Raleigh, North Carolina; Jonathan Drew in Raleigh; Jeffrey Collins and Jack Jones in Columbia, South Carolina; Russ Bynum in Savannah and Terrance Harris in Daytona Beach, Florida also contributed to this report. </s> CHARLESTON, S.C. — A fast-weakening Hurricane Matthew continued its march along the Atlantic coast Saturday, lashing two of the South’s most historic cities and some of its most popular resort islands, flattening trees, swamping streets and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands.

The storm was blamed for at least four deaths in the U.S., all in Florida. In its long wake, it also left at least 470 dead in Haiti in one hard-hit district alone, according to officials, with other stricken areas still unreachable four days after the disaster struck.

Matthew raked Georgia and South Carolina with torrential rain and stiff winds, and — for the first time in its run up the U.S. coastline — its storm centre blew ashore, making landfall near the town of McClellanville, South Carolina, where it caused serious flooding.

Up until then, the centre, or eye, mercifully stayed just far enough out at sea that coastal communities didn’t feel the full force of Matthew’s winds. As the storm passed one city after another, the reaction was relief that things were nowhere near as bad as many feared.

“We are all blessed that Matthew stayed off our coast,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said. “We are blessed that we didn’t have a direct hit.”

As of 11 a.m., Matthew was just barely a hurricane, with winds of 75 mph. That was down from 145 mph when the storm roared into Haiti. It was moving at 12 mph.

Among the cities bracing for its effects later in the day were Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina. From there, the storm was expected to veer out to sea and loop back around toward the Bahamas, though as a much-weakened storm.

North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory warned people not to let their guard down just because Matthew was losing steam.

In Savannah, Georgia, a historic town of moss-draped squares and antebellum mansions, floodwaters several feet deep submerged a long stretch of President Street, which links downtown to the highway to Georgia’s Tybee Island. A woman was seen staggering through waters up to her neck.

The shivering woman made it to the water’s edge. A bystander handed her a sheet, which she wrapped around her neck.

“I’m homeless,” said the woman, who identified herself only as Valerie. “I’ve got nine kids, but I couldn’t evacuate with them.”

Matthew also brought some of the highest tides on record along the South Carolina coast. Streets in Charleston — a city of handsome pre-Civil War homes, church steeples and romantic carriage rides — were flooded.

Leigh Webber watched the torrential rains from the porch of her home in the city’s historic district.

“It’s not as bad as maybe I was expecting,” she said.

“I feel badly for a lot of the businesses downtown that have been closed since Wednesday,” she added. “I noticed a lot of hotels were completely closed. I know some weddings were cancelled and it was a huge financial loss for a lot of people.”

South Carolina’s golf-and-tennis resort Hilton Head Island also took a blow as the eye of the storm passed 20 miles to the east. At least one gust of 87 mph was recorded at Hilton Head.

The two roads onto the island of 40,000 people were blocked by fallen pine trees, and many roads were under water. Signs were blown over, and power was out across the island.

Chandler Brunson and was among those trying to go back to her home after evacuating, but found her path blocked.

“I think we’re going to have a pine tree splitting our house,” she said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Residents of Brunswick, Georgia, woke to roads covered by water or fallen trees and downed power lines. All access points to nearby St. Simons Island from the mainland were blocked. Tybee Island also took a beating, with gusts clocked at 93 mph.

Nearly a half-million electric customers in South Carolina were left without power, and 250,000 were in the dark in coastal Georgia.

Matthew — the most powerful hurricane to threaten the Atlantic Seaboard in more than a decade — set off alarms as it closed in on the U.S., triggering evacuation orders covering at least 2 million people.

But in the end, the hurricane skirted Florida’s heavily populated Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area and sideswiped cities farther north, including Daytona Beach, Vero Beach, Cape Canaveral and Jacksonville, without its centre ever actually coming ashore in Florida.

The damage consisted largely of fallen trees, downed power lines, eroded beaches and flooded roads. In northeastern Florida, the storm gouged out several large sections of the coastal A1A highway north of Daytona Beach.

Well south of the storm, things quickly began returning to normal Saturday, with all three of Orlando’s main theme parks — Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld — reopening in the morning.

The deaths in Florida included an elderly St. Lucie County couple who died from carbon monoxide fumes while running a generator in their garage and two women who were killed when trees fell on a home and a camper.

On Friday, the storm raked yet another historic Southern city: St. Augustine, Florida, which was founded by the Spanish in the 1500s and includes a 17th-century stone fortress and many historic homes turned into bed-and-breakfasts. The city was left awash in rain and grey seawater.

Police blocked all access to the city early Saturday as power crews repaired lines and downed trees were cut up.

Associated Press writers Holbrook Mohr in Orlando, Florida; Gary Fineout in Tallahassee, Florida; Kelli Kennedy and Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Jennifer Kay, Freida Frisaro and Curt Anderson in Miami; Marcia Dunn in Cape Canaveral, Florida; Janelle Cogan in Orlando, Florida; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Martha Waggoner in Raleigh, North Carolina; Jeffrey Collins on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina; Jack Jones and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Bruce Smith in Charleston, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
The death toll in the United States from Hurricane Matthew rises to 27 with at least five people still missing in North Carolina. Governor Pat McCrory warns that the state's swollen rivers are still rising with flooding continuing to pose threats to life and property this week. The storm, downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone yesterday, moves away from the U.S. coastline on an east-northeast track.