Rivers were rising to record crests in North Carolina after more than 17 inches of rain fell during Hurricane Matthew. Water rose over a levee on the Lumber River in Robeson County, and hydrologists were concerned about the levees and cities on the Tar, Neuse and Black rivers as billions of gallons of water drained east to the Atlantic.
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The Lumber River swelled beyond its capacity Sunday night into Monday morning, and water spilled across Interstate 95 into the city of Lumberton. In Robeson, an impoverished inland county, the rising river trapped at least 1,000 people, rescue officials said, most of them in a neighborhood of small apartment complexes and public housing.
On Monday, search teams were working frantically to pull people out of the neighborhood. Helicopters yanked stranded residents from rooftops, and military-grade vehicles -- capable of driving through four feet of water -- moved through the area half-submerged. Other teams used rafts and boats.
The county has been depositing the residents at five shelters.
[ MATTHEW’S IMPACT: Map of power outages, shelters]
[HURRICANE TRACKER: Follow Hurricane Matthew’s path so far]
Officials have also discovered several vehicles submerged underwater and are unsure of whether there are bodies inside. They also say that it's difficult to ensure that they're finding all who are trapped.
"I'm scared to give you an estimate" about the death toll, said Erich Hackney, a councilman for the city of Lumberton, "and I'm scared to know what we'll find."
The storm killed more than 500 people in Haiti and at least 23 in the U.S. -- nearly half of them in North Carolina.
The Rev. Volley Hanson worried that stress from the lack of running water and electricity might push people in Lumberton over the edge. Robeson County, which includes Lumberton, had North Carolina's highest violent crime rate in 2014.
"The cash is going to be running out. We've already got street vendors hawking water, Cokes and cigarettes. Cigarettes are at seven bucks a pack," Hanson said. "It's nuts here, and it's going to get worse."
[WATCH: Video shows plane flying into eye of Hurricane Matthew]
The river rose to 24 feet upstream of the city before the river gauge failed Sunday afternoon. In the city itself, the river appears to have crested at nearly 22 feet and is maintaining that level, about four feet higher than the previous record. The National Weather Service said Monday that the levee that protects Lumberton did not fail; rather, the floodwater west of Interstate 95 was so high that it was flowing around the levee and into the city through a highway underpass.
While speaking at a news conference, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory said it doesn't matter whether the levee was breached.
"The results are the same," he said. "To the people below the levee, it doesn't make much difference."
The aftermath of Matthew's rainfall is rippling east across North Carolina rivers.
"The town is totally flooded," McCrory said, "and now next is Kinston, Greenville, Rocky Mount -- anywhere you're along a river you're going to get hit."
The Black River hit a record high at Tomahawk, N.C., on Monday afternoon. Michael Moneypenny, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service, said the Black River is expected to rise another foot in Sampson County before beginning to recede.
"We were told there's no access into or out of the county," Moneypenny said. "It's really flat there. I cannot imagine how many thousands of acres are flooded."
Some of the residents in the city of Goldsboro, which lies on the Neuse River, were asked to voluntarily evacuate the area before sunset Sunday night.
"Residents that do not evacuate prior to sunset could be on their own as floodwaters rise and rescue by first responders becomes too dangerous," the city government said in a notice posted to its Facebook page.
Since Sept. 1, Fayetteville, N.C., has recorded more than 26 inches of rain, which is 20 inches more than average. The soil in that area was saturated even before Hurricane Matthew developed in the Caribbean. The dams and levees in that area are still weak from 2015's flooding in the Carolinas.
Evacuation regrets
Maureen Miller was among the 2 million people ordered to evacuate coastal areas in the Southeast ahead of Hurricane Matthew. Her family and their dog spent two nights in a hotel and struggled through police roadblocks to return.
When they finally got back, their Brunswick, Ga.-area home was unscathed. Now, they say, they wish they had never left.
"I will never evacuate again," Miller said. "If we stayed, we'd be fine. I'm sure there are a lot of people who feel the same way."
Weather experts and government officials said they fear that people who quickly packed up and left but whose homes sustained little or no damage might be reluctant to evacuate next time, leading to deadly consequences.
"We are a culture that seems to get angry if the worst-case scenario doesn't happen and we prepare for it," said Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia Atmospheric Sciences Program. "I am continually baffled at the people that seem to anger that there is not more loss of life and destruction. That is the point of evacuating."
An old hurricane adage says that people should hide from the wind and run from the water. Much of the concern about Hurricane Matthew was focused on its howling 145 mph winds. At its height, the system was a Category 4 storm. But the reason for the evacuations had more to do with potential coastal storm surge.
"Nine out of 10 people who lose their lives in hurricanes do so from the water, not the wind. And half of those are due to storm surge," said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the Miami-based National Hurricane Center. "Many people do not realize the sheer power of water."
Predictions in Florida called for storm surge of up to 9 feet above normal, with large waves on top of that. While the surge did not quite reach those levels, it did cause flooding and beach erosion in places such as St. Augustine and Flagler Beach.
David Waters, spokesman for Brevard County, Fla., emergency operations, said some people on barrier islands began calling for help early Friday, but first responders were not able to safely go out.
"I've talked to other families who have said things like, 'We're scared. We wish we hadn't stayed,'" Waters said.
Others said the evacuations may have been an overreaction.
Retirees Rick and Judy Rumford live in a mobile home park just across a two-lane highway from the surf in Flagler Beach. They evacuated inland and returned Saturday to find their home virtually untouched aside from debris in their small yard and a power failure.
Judy Rumford noted that sheet metal and porches were peeled off numerous homes in their community, but her husband said he regretted evacuating. The wind and storm surge weren't that bad, he said, and leaving just wasn't worth the trouble.
"We'll think about it harder next time," Rumford said.
Information for this article was contributed by Angela Fritz and Chico Harlan of The Washington Post and by Emery P. Dalesio and Martha Waggoner and Curt Anderson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 10/11/2016