The governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, has ordered Monday the compulsory evacuation of about one million people from Tuesday to noon, due to the imminent arrival on Thursday of Hurricane ' Florence ' to the east coast of America.
"I am ordering compulsory, non-voluntary, compulsory evacuation"Said McMaster At a press conference shortly after ' Florence ' was strengthened with winds of 195 miles per hour. "About a million people will be leaving the coast," he added.
"This is a real hurricane," said the governor. "Evacuations are inconvenient, but we don't want to risk a single life."
' Florence ' may be the first Category 4 hurricane to arrive in South Carolina from ' Hugo ' in 1989. Hurricane ' Florence ' has quickly intensified on Monday, when it reached Category 4 of a maximum 5 scale on a route that will take it Thursday to the east coast of the United States, meteorologists reported. Today the hurricane blew with sustained maximum winds of 195 miles per hour and was about 1,985 miles per hour southeast of North Carolina, according to a bulletin of the National Hurricane Center (NHC). The NHC has not yet issued alerts or warnings for the storm, but both states, as well as Virginia further north, declared the state of emergency to accelerate contingency plans.
' Florence ', whose eye is currently centered between the islands of Bermuda and the Bahamas, will play land between Thursday and Friday on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, although the trajectory is not yet clear. "Florence has continued to strengthen rapidly", wrote the NHC by upgrading to 4 the power of the hurricane, shortly after it reached Category 3 and became an "extremely dangerous" and "potentially catastrophic" storm. "Here in North Carolina we are preparing for a strong blow"Said the governor of that state, Roy Cooper, at a press conference on Monday. He added that North Carolina is taking Hurricane Florence "very seriously" and asked the citizens to do so too. He also said that he had asked President Donald Trump to issue a disaster statement to gain access to federal aid.
At the moment, the eye of the hurricane is expected to enter the continent at the height of the small port town of Wilmington in southern North Carolina. Meteorologists warn that the hurricane could then remain stagnant on the mainland before it dissipates, as ' Harvey ' did in Texas last year, which would increase the risk of flooding. On his side, the office of the Governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, Called ' Florence ' as ' the most important hurricane in decades ' For the state, and warned of the possibility of "catastrophic floods, strong winds and possibly wide power outages".
"The biggest threat of hurricanes is not strong winds, but floods are the deadliest consequence of these storms," he added.
The U.S. Navy ordered all of their ships to leave the Hampton area Roads, in the wake of the hurricane.
The cyclone"is too powerful and his trajectory too uncertain to leave anything to chance," said his side the governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, when issuing the emergency declaration.