'Catastrophic' flooding from Hurricane Dorian on Outer Banks as storm moves out to sea

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. – Hurricane Dorian howled over North Carolina's Outer Banks on Friday, lashing the low-lying barrier islands as a weakened Category 1 storm, and made landfall over Cape Hatteras.

The storm's winds knocked out power at 215,000 homes and businesses across the state as massive storm surge threatened buildings along the coast.

Flooding on the Outer Banks had some residents seeking refuge in their attics. Hundreds were feared trapped by high water, and neighbors used boats to rescue one another.

Ocracoke Island was inundated with storm surge, causing what some residents described as "catastrophic" flooding, Gov. Roy Cooper said in a Friday afternoon news conference.

About 800 people remained on the island during the hurricane, he said. The island is now without power, and homes and buildings are underwater. Hatteras Island and other parts of the Outer Banks are also without electricity.

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"The flooding there is significant much like the flooding in the last two hurricanes, but it is more concentrated," Cooper said, referring to 2018’s Hurricane Florence and 2016’s Hurricane Matthew, both of which walloped the state.

The Coast Guard airlifted a 79-year-old man with existing medical issues off Ocracoke, Cooper said. Residents wishing to leave are also being airlifted, and a shelter in Washington County has been opened for them.

North Carolina National Guard Maj. Gen. James Ernst said six missions have been flown to the barrier islands, including four resupply trips and an aerial reconnaissance mission.

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Ferry operations to the barrier islands should resume on Saturday, according to North Carolina Department of Transportation director Jim Trogdon.

About 4,500 people stayed in shelters overnight in North Carolina and more than 70 roads were impassable, Cooper said. A number of tornadoes touched down Thursday, too, he said, and while there were no serious injuries, there was significant damage.

A Red Cross shelter on Elizabeth City State University's campus lost power around 8 a.m. Friday. It's using a generator to get by while parts of Elizabeth City wait for power to be restored.

Shelter manager Jim Wolfe, 72, said the center is housing 74 people. "Their concern is whether they'll be able to get back to a house before too long. Whether their house is under water or that type of thing," he said.

A weather station at Hatteras High School reported sustained winds at 77 mph and gusts up to 89 mph, the hurricane center said earlier Friday.

Wilmington saw heavy rainfall with as much as 15 inches in isolated patches. Trees bent in the wind and traffic lights swayed.

On Atlantic Beach, oceanside homes that were rocked by Hurricane Florence last year stood with a few bruises but mostly intact.

Janice Bynum, owner of the Tackle Box Tavern, said she's closed just twice in the past 35 years. She kept the doors open Thursday night up to the edge of curfew and reopened Friday with help from a crowd of regular customers, a generator and a half ton of ice.

"I only close for hurricanes, but I don't close for (Category) 2's," Bynum said. "I stayed awake all night and about 3 a.m., everything kicked into a new gear. I'm just happy it's nothing like last year (when Florence hit). We are still open, and the beer is still cold."

In Morehead City, shuttered business lined both sides of U.S. Highway 70 as a few cars and trucks crawled along. The town remained under a curfew until 3 p.m.

The only activity? At that Southern mainstay, the local Waffle House. "I slept through the whole thing," said Ted Nowell, who lives in the Morehead City area. "Power didn’t even go out until about 7:30 (a.m.)."

Up to 7 feet of storm surge is possible from Salter Path to Duck, and parts of southeastern Virginia could see up to 4 feet of storm surge, the NHC says.

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The storm formed tornadoes in South Carolina, too, ripping off roofs and flipping trailers Thursday. A quarter of a million homes and businesses were left without power.

"People have to realize it’s not just about the center" of the storm, said Ken Graham, director of the hurricane center. "You have to look at the whole storm."

However, from the Lowcountry to the Grand Strand, there was a sigh of relief as potentially historic flash floods did not overwhelm.

Historic downtown Charleston did see up to a foot of water on some streets Thursday, and gusts reached up to 80 mph in some areas. But Mayor John Tecklenburg said in a tweet that during the city's recovery efforts, "I'm counting our blessings."

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The fears of seawater overtopping the walls of The Battery and torrential rainfall leaving the city underwater proved unfounded, as water in the streets leveled off Friday morning.

From Charleston to Myrtle Beach, the highest wind speeds clocked in at 87 mph at Winyah Bay, a coastal area of Georgetown in between. Rainfall totaled 11 inches in areas of Georgetown County, about 7 inches in Myrtle Beach and just over 5 inches measured at the Charleston airport.

A Jeep was mysteriously abandoned on the Myrtle Beach shore early Thursday, quickly gaining an audience at the beach and online, with Twitter transforming it into a tongue-in-cheek storm mascot.

It remained there, wobbling in the waves Friday at sunrise.

At least four deaths have been attributed to Dorian in the mainland U.S., which all involved men who died in falls or were electrocuted while preparing for the storm in Florida and North Carolina.

The storm will be southeast of southeastern New England Friday evening and in Nova Scotia by Saturday, the NHC said. The Canadian Hurricane Center has issued a hurricane warning for eastern Nova Scotia from Hubbards to Avonport.

Earlier, Dorian devastated the Bahamas with 185-mph winds, leaving at least 30 people dead, after its slow trek through the Caribbean. The storm decimated much of Grand Bahama and Abaco Islands: Homes were leveled, cars were flipped, trees were uprooted and, horrifically, children were swept away in the storm surge.

At one point, the threat of a major hurricane making landfall along Florida's east coast loomed, but the storm lurched north instead, staying 60 to 80 miles offshore as it passed by.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said the death toll was expected to rise as storm rescue workers scour islands.

The Bahamian government sent hundreds of police and marines into the stricken islands, along with doctors, nurses and other health care workers. The U.S. Coast Guard, Britain’s Royal Navy and relief organizations, including the United Nations and the Red Cross, joined the growing effort to rush food and medicine to survivors and lift the most desperate people to safety by helicopter.

The hurricane also caused a significant oil spill at a petroleum storage terminal on Grand Bahama Island, according to Associated Press reporting Friday evening.

Satellite images taken Friday show a slick of black oil seeping from the South Riding Point terminal.

Equinor is the facility’s owner. In a statement, it said its initial aerial assessment showed the seaside terminal had sustained damage and oil has been observed on the ground outside of the onshore tanks. The company said it was “too early” to estimate how much oil might have spilled into the surrounding environment, but that there were “no observations of any oil spill at sea.”

The terminal’s tanks can hold 6.75 million barrels of crude oil and condensate. The facility was shut down Saturday as the Category 5 storm approached the island.

Equinor said it has mobilized oil spill response resources that will arrive “as soon as possible.”

Equinor is an international oil company that is majority-owned by the Norwegian government.

Contributing: Adrianna Rodriguez, John Bacon, Trevor Hughes and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY; Brian Gordon, Asheville Citizen Times; Eric Connor and Carol Motsinger, The Greenville News; The Associated Press.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hurricane Dorian makes landfall over Cape Hatteras, North Carolina