The Latest: NFL’s Panthers donating to help Florence victims

The package includes a $1 million donation to the American Red Cross, $450,000 to regional food banks through 25,000 emergency food packs, as well as aid to high school athletic programs affected by storm damage.

The Panthers staff and players will engage in direct service projects for impacted areas.

The team is also spearheading and co-ordinating an effort with college football programs in North and South Carolina to unveil a special “One Carolina” helmet sticker to be worn during games on Saturday. Panthers players will wear the sticker during Sunday’s home game against Cincinnati.

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7:40 p.m.

Gov. Roy Cooper says he’ll call a special session of the North Carolina legislature in a few weeks to get initial state funding approved to aid the Hurricane Florence recovery.

Cooper on Thursday evening announced his plans to proclaim a special session of the General Assembly to begin Oct. 9.

The governor hasn’t said how much damage the storm has caused but earlier Thursday said it would be in the billions of dollars. Cooper’s news release says he’ll be assembling funding requests for lawmakers in Raleigh and in Washington.

Special sessions have been called after Hurricane Floyd in 1999 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016, either two or three months after each event. This one will occur more quickly. Cooper says it’s clear the destruction caused by Florence is “historic” and that elected officials need to come together to begin rebuilding.

North Carolina has a rainy-day reserve fund of $2 billion, and there are hundreds of millions of dollars in other pots available to Cooper.

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6:30 p.m.

Authorities cracking down on looting and break-ins in one North Carolina county impacted by Florence say they’ve arrested more than a dozen people. Three of those arrests came after an online undercover sting operation.

News outlets cite Jacksonville police as saying officers saw a broken-out front window at an athletic shoe store but the investigation had to be delayed during the storm’s passage — and until they could contact the owners.

Police say the suspects were using an online app to sell stolen goods to undercover officers. The three were charged with felony breaking and entering, looting, curfew violation and other charges. They say they recovered dozens of pairs of stolen shoes, as well as clothing, many of the items with security devices and tags still attached.

The three men were all given $70,000 secured bonds. It’s not known if they have attorneys.

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6:30 p.m.

Two interstates closed to traffic in eastern North Carolina because of river flooding from Florence likely will remain closed for at least another week.

Transportation Secretary Jim Trogdon said Thursday that 16 sections of Interstate 40 and Interstate 95 are still flooded, preventing major traffic from getting into and out of the city of Wilmington. While some motorists are using alternate routes to reach the southeastern North Carolina coast, Gov. Roy Cooper urged displaced residents to stay away from areas that still lack power and other necessities.

Trogdon says he anticipates the interstate routes won’t re-open until the flooding recedes on the Cape Fear and Lumber rivers. He says that means I-40 won’t be cleared to traffic until next weekend at the earliest, and I-95’s reopening could be longer.

Cooper says more than 700 roads remains closed. Authorities are warning against road travel in all or parts of 17 eastern counties.

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5:20 p.m.

Officials in the place where much of the floodwaters from Hurricane Florence will reach the Atlantic Ocean are preparing for a flood like they have never seen before.

Georgetown County Administrator Sel Hemingway said Thursday it is too early to know exactly how high the water will get or how much land will be flooded starting next week.

Water from five different rivers flow through the county to the ocean.

Hemingway says in the worst-case scenario, more than 10 per cent of the county’s 61,000 residents might have to evacuate. Flooding could cut off U.S. Highway 17, the main road north out of Georgetown.

Hemmingway says officials should know more by this weekend.

Authorities planned to start handing out 15,000 sandbags Friday.

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5:20 p.m.

Officials from several state agencies are urging motorists not to travel in areas of southeastern North Carolina because many roads remain impassable due to flooding and road conditions which continue to change.

The N.C. Highway Patrol and others say travel is not recommended in Bladen, Brunswick, Columbus, western Craven, Cumberland, Duplin, Harnett, Hoke, southern Johnston, Jones, Lenoir, New Hanover, Pender, Robeson, Sampson, Scotland and southern Wayne counties.

Patrol commander Col. Glenn McNeill Jr. says that while some routes are starting to open, motorists should avoid travel in flooded areas unless necessary and should never drive on flooded roads.

Officials say that GPS systems are less reliable in the aftermath of a hurricane when conditions are frequently changing. As such, motorists should avoid completely relying on their GPS systems for roadway information as these systems may re-route them to a road that is closed.

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4:05 p.m.

At least 41 deaths have now been attributed to Hurricane Florence.

North Carolina Department of Public Safety spokesman Keith Acree says four additional deaths were reported Thursday to the state and occurred in Duplin County. He says a 74-year-old man and his 22-year-old granddaughter died Monday of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a generator that was inside the home.

An 87-year-old woman and her 81-year-old husband also died. Acree said they had been living without power for several days.

The death toll in North Carolina now stands at 31. The other deaths occurred in South Carolina and Virginia.

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4:05 p.m.

Utility workers continue to work to restore power to North Carolina residents who lost electricity due to Hurricane Florence.

North Carolina’s electric co-operatives reported Thursday statewide outages have dropped to about 38,000, down from a historic high of 326,000 on Saturday.

Duke Energy reported more than 70,000 customers without power in southeastern North Carolina. Of those, more than a third, or about 24,500, are in New Hanover County, which includes the city of Wilmington.

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1:45 p.m.

Hundreds of roads in North Carolina remain closed due to the effects of former Hurricane Florence.

The N.C. Department of Transportation said on its Twitter page Thursday that nearly 750 roads are still closed. At one point as many as 2,200 were closed.

The closures include sections of Interstate 40 and Interstate 95. Also, U.S. Highway 258 in Kinston was closed Thursday due to flooding, and the department said drivers should plan for U.S. Highway 70 to be closed as the Neuse River continues to rise.

U.S. 70 is one of the major routes from Raleigh to the coast.

The department also said U.S. 421 at the New Hanover County line is now closed.

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1:45 p.m.

Major flooding on North Carolina’s Little River earlier this week swallowed buildings and forced evacuations. Now that waters have receded, property owners along its banks are returning to survey the damage.

The destruction brought by the flood was evident Thursday in Spring Lake, North Carolina, a town of 13,000 near Ft. Bragg. The banks were littered with bricks and debris from a motel that collapsed after flooding swept the earth out from under it.

Next door, a convenience store owner inspected damage to his shop where turbulent floodwater had knocked down shelves and left silty mud on the walls and floor.

Heavy rain from Hurricane Florence earlier this week caused the Little River to swell well beyond its banks.

Before National Weather service gauges measuring water levels stopped working, it had reached 36 feet (10 metres), a record-breaking major flood.

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1:45 p.m.

Many groups are helping to feed victims of Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, but one stands out for the sheer volume of meals it has distributed: World Central Kitchen.

The chairman of the New Hanover County commissioners says the non-profit organization came to Wilmington four days before the storm. He says it has provided 90,000 meals so far for shelters, first responders, the National Guard and the people working in the county’s emergency operations.

Chairman Woody White said the group has started bringing meals into communities via food trucks. White says World Central Kitchen’s work has been “remarkable to witness.”

Celebrity chef Jose Andres founded the non-profit, which is best known for serving more than 1 million meals last year in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

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1 p.m.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster says the state’s financial losses from Florence are estimated at more than $1.2 billion.

McMaster provided the damages estimates Thursday in a letter to the state’s congressional delegation.

Among the breakdowns included in McMaster’s letter is an estimated $125 million hit to South Carolina’s agriculture industry. The governor noted that some of the estimates were based on damage resulting from Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

McMaster has requested federal disaster-recovery funds be made available for 23 of South Carolina’s 46 counties.

He wrote the damage from Florence in the northeastern area of the state “will be catastrophic, surpassing anything recorded in modern history.”

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10 a.m.

Duke Energy has activated a high-level emergency alert at a retired coal-fired power plant near Wilmington, North Carolina, as floodwaters from the nearby Cape Fear River overtopped an earthen dike and inundated a large lake.

Duke spokeswoman Paige Sheehan said Thursday that the dam containing Sutton Lake appears stable and they are monitoring the situation with helicopters and drones to react to what was called “an evolving situation.”

The lake is a former cooling pond at the L.V. Sutton Power Station and is adjacent to three large coal ash dumps. A landfill at the site ruptured over the weekend, spilling enough material to fill 180 dump trucks. Coal ash contains arsenic, mercury and other toxic heavy metals.

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8:30 a.m.

A section of Interstate 95 in South Carolina has been closed because of flooding.

The Department of Public Safety said Wednesday evening that the highway was closed in both directions at the 175 mile marker because of high water levels at the bridges crossing the Great Pee Dee River. There are detours available for local traffic.

The decision to close the road comes less than 12 hours after the department had reopened a 9-mile (14-kilometre) stretch of the highway near the North Carolina state line, which had meant the entire highway was open in the state.

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1 a.m.

Hurricane Florence is still wearing out the Carolinas, where residents have endured an agonizing week of violent winds, torrential rain, widespread flooding, power outages and death.

Frustration and sheer exhaustion are building as thousands of people wait to go home seven days after the storm began battering the coast.

Florence is blamed for at least 37 deaths. That includes those of two women who drowned when a sheriff’s van taking them to a mental health facility was swept off a road.

President Donald Trump visited North and South Carolina on Wednesday, saying the government will be there to help.

But evacuee and college student Evan Jones says he’s just ready for it all to be over. In his words: “I’m trying to get it all out of my head.”

The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

The Latest: NFL’s Panthers donating to help Florence victims

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