Hurricane Florence from the field Sunday: Watching the rain and the rivers rise

Sept. 16--As Hurricane Florence, now a tropical storm, crawls through the Carolinas, our reporters and photojournalists are on the coast. Their Saturday reports from the coast are here.

You can follow them at @_andrewcarter, @joshshaffer08, @MarthaQuillin. @vizjourno, @travisheying, @duncanreporting, @hgsmoot

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Robeson County, N.C.: Evacuate now

11 a.m.: Robeson County officials were evacuating residents Sunday morning from the towns of Pembroke and Lumberton.

Emergency officials and volunteers had been working throughout the morning to hold back the rising Lumber River, which was overflowing its berm and sandbags but had not yet breached the levee.

A mandatory evacuation was issued for residents in south and west Lumberton. Others in Lumberton and Pembroke were encouraged to catch a bus out of town immediately.

Buses are picking people up now at two locations: Burger King at West Fifth Street in Lumberton, and Pembroke City Fire in Pembroke.

Charlotte, N.C.: Into the storm

10 a.m.: After a full day of drenching through most of the Carolinas, former Hurricane Florence brought a band of heavier rainfall and a flash-flood warning to Mecklenburg County on Sunday.

The new line of storms, running south of Salisbury into South Carolina, was expected to add to worsening conditions and bring down trees across the Charlotte region. Wind gusts of up to 40 mph and 2 inches of rainfall per hour were possible across Charlotte and into Huntersville, Concord and Monroe.

The National Weather Service issued a flash-flood warning just after 8 a.m. for much of Mecklenburg County. A flash flood watch was expected to continue into Monday morning, with 6 inches or more of additional precipitation possible through Sunday night.

"Road conditions are deteriorating quickly," the city tweeted Sunday morning. "We highly urge you to stay off the roads unless it's absolutely necessary."

-- ELY PORTILLO, DEON ROBERTS AND MICHAEL GORDON

Triangle: Turning on the lights

10 a.m.: Duke Energy reported Sunday morning that there were less than 20,000 power outages in Wake County.

In Durham County and Orange County, there were less than 1,000 customers without power.

Most of Wake County's power outages were reported in the southern half of the county. Power was out in neighborhoods off New Bern Avenue and Gorman Street in Raleigh, off Southwest Maynard Road in Cary and across Garner.

-- DAWN BAUMGARTNER VAUGHAN

Lumberton, N.C.: Homes at risk again

9:44 a.m.: Shakeia Bethea got the knock on her door around 12:30 a.m., somebody telling her to get out of her mobile home on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in south Lumberton.

"They said the levee broke," Bethea said. On Twitter, officials were saying the levee, an earthen berm that tries to confine the Lumber River through town, was holding, but the water was topping it.

As a result, many neighborhoods on the city's south side had from a few inches of water to 3 feet or more standing around them. The roofs of dog houses stood above the water in some places. On N.C. 211 just west of Interstate 95, a pickup truck and a car were fully submerged.

Bethea took the warning, packed a few things and got her car out of harm's way while she could. She planned to try to find a hotel room, a rare commodity in a city with so little electricity and so many storm refugees already.

Bethea was in the same home in October 2016, when Hurricane Matthew sent epic levels of water into Lumberton, damaging thousands of homes and displacing residents.

The owners of many of those homes have made no repairs while waiting to hear whether their property will be bought out. Federal programs aimed at reducing future flooding help buy floodprone homes and remove them, leaving the land undeveloped.

Flooding from now-Tropical Storm Florence had reached many of those rotting, vacant homes Sunday morning, flooding them and the homes that had been repaired and re-occupied.

The rain paused from 6 a.m. until about 9:30 a.m., giving residents who had been stuck in their homes for days a chance to get out. They walked or drove around their neighborhoods and into downtown, until the next bands of the storm sent them back inside.

-- MARTHA QUILLIN

Hope Mills, N.C.: Dam still holding

9 a.m.: Water from Rockfish Creek was raging through the Hope Mills Dam on Sunday morning, dumping into the Cape Fear River.

Hope Mills Mayor Jackie Warner, who was at the dam, told the News & Observer that it was "structurally sound" and "functioning as it should."

Water was rushing over five "weirs" at the dam -- long protrusions that increase surface area of the water and slow it down.

Warner said she's in contact with engineer for the dam, who also inspected it, and regular updates on its status are going out.

Despite overnight concern that Florence's floodwaters could compromise the dam, Warner said she's confident it will hold.

"It's a tremendous amount of water. So many people think it already failed," she said.

Water normally flows over only two of the dam's five weirs. On Sunday, it rushed over all five, bulging over the first two more than over the others. The dam is connected to Hope Mills Lake and is near downtown -- just down the road from the police and fire departments.

But there was still room for more water on the weirs.

"People were worried and were calling, texting and Facebooking throughout the night," Warner said. "It was a rough night, worrying that we might have an issue. But I'm confident."

But as the Cape Fear rises, Warner said she worries it could potentially back water back up through the dam.

"We're hoping it keeps flowing and doesn't push water back up toward us," she said.

-- ABBIE BENNETT

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