Carolinas Storm Damage Tally Impeded by Lingering Floods

摘要

As October rolls in, slow-moving flood crests and sluggish drainage persisting weeks after the passage of Hurricane Florence are leaving large eastern areas in the affected states too inundated for accurate damage assessments. The extent of damage is still largely uncalculated. In some cases, it's believed to be worsening. Schools and universities are particularly hard hit. "We are in process of gathering damage estimates, but it is very preliminary at this point," says Drew Elliot, communications director with the N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction. "I don't have any hard data to share-mostly because the hardest-hit areas are least able, for a variety of reasons, to obtain accurate damage estimates of school-related structures. But we feel comfortable saying that we will be lucky if damages to schools from Florence don't reach three times the damages from [Hurricane] Matthew."