'This is not over': Hurricane sideswipes Florida coast, 1.1 million without power
Curfews put in place, states of emergency declared in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina
Hurricane Matthew spared Florida's most heavily populated stretch from a catastrophic blow Friday but threatened some of the South's most historic and picturesque cities with ruinous flooding and wind damage as it pushed its way up the coastline.
Among the cities in the crosshairs were St. Augustine, Fla.; Savannah, Ga.; and Charleston, S.C.
"There are houses that will probably not ever be the same again or not even be there," St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver lamented as battleship-grey floodwaters coursed through the streets of the 451-year-old city founded by the Spanish.
Matthew is the most powerful hurricane to threaten the Atlantic Seaboard in over a decade.
U.S. President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in North Carolina. Obama has already declared states of emergency in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, the other states in Matthew's path.
The storm sideswiped Florida's Atlantic coast early Friday, swamping streets, toppling trees onto homes and knocking out power to more than 1.1 million people. But it stayed just far enough offshore to prevent major damage to cities like Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. And the coast never felt the full force of its winds because the centre of the storm stayed just offshore.
"It looks like we've dodged a bullet," said Rep. Patrick Murphy, a Democrat whose district includes Martin County, just north of West Palm Beach.
As of 11 p.m. ET, the U.S. National Hurricane Centre said the eye of the hurricane was "continuing northward just off the coast of Georgia" with storm surge flooding in parts of Georgia and Florida.
2 women killed
Two women died in separate events in Florida. One was killed when a tree fell on her house in the Daytona area and the other died when a tree came down on a camper in Putnam County. A man was also hurt in that instance.
Meanwhile, the magnitude of the devastation inflicted by Matthew as it roared through the Caribbean became ever clearer, with officials saying hundreds were killed in Haiti.
Daytona Beach boarded up
The CBC's Steven D'Souza reported Friday evening that nearly every business along South Beach St. in Daytona Beach had been boarded up in anticipation of the storm, except for Amaya's Boutique.
Flooding and debris in Daytona Beach <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HurricaneMatthew?src=hash">#HurricaneMatthew</a> <a href="https://t.co/w5VDeMGPyY">pic.twitter.com/w5VDeMGPyY</a>
—@cbcsteveWhen she pulled up to survey the damage after the storm whipped through, Lisa Fuster was relieved to see the storefront was still intact.
"The area is pretty sad looking, there's a lot of mess to pick up, but I'm just happy for my mom that her store is okay," she said.
Her mother, Anita Jojin, has owned the women's clothing boutique on this normally busy retail strip on and off or decades. She had to have surgery a few days before the hurricane's arrival, so no one was around to protect the store against the incoming storm.
"We emptied all the windows of the clothes just in case the glass broke," Fuster said.
Hurricane Matthew hit Daytona Beach midday Friday, packing winds close to 200 km/h. After moving offshore and sparing most of southern Florida, Matthew moved back towards the coast, and at just 30 kilometres away, Daytona Beach was the closest the eye wall and its powerful winds came to the mainland.
"It sounded just like a damn freight train coming through," said local resident and friend of Fuster, Anthony Johnson.
After a week of warnings and cautions to take shelter from public officials, Johnson and Fuster decided to ride out the storm at home.
"They should have had those warnings," she said. "At my house we have 30-foot fences, they're down, roof shingles blew off off, nobody should have been out, definitely."
Both agree, next time, if there is one, they'll handle things differently.
"I don't want to stay for this again, I'd rather just go and you know, not have to worry about this stuff, this not good," Fuster said.
'It's go time'
In historic St. Augustine, Fla., the downtown district was impassable by noon due to widespread flooding.
A giant oak limb had fallen in an old cemetery, and the power started going out in some neighbourhoods as transformers exploded.
On Georgia's Tybee Island, where most of the 3,000 residents were evacuated, Jeff Dickey had been holding out hope that the storm might shift and spare his home. As the rain picked up, he decided staying wasn't worth the risk.
"We kind of tried to wait to see if it will tilt more to the east," Dickey said. "But it's go time."
As the storm closed in over the past few days, an estimated 2 million people across the Southeast were warned to clear out.
Prison officials in Georgia announced that they had moved 1,500 inmates from facilities in coastal counties as the hurricane approached.
Stork takes refuge in zoo bathroom
Humans aren't the only ones hunkering down as Hurricane Matthew batters Florida. A stork has apparently found refuge in a zoo bathroom.
The St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park has shared a photo of a marabou stork inside a bathroom at the facility. The zoo's Facebook page jokes in the caption, "No species discrimination in this bathroom!" — an apparent reference to a law in North Carolina that obligates students to use public school bathrooms conforming to the gender on their birth certificate rather than their gender identity.
In the end, Matthew largely skirted the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach area of over 6 million people and hugged closer to the coast farther north, menacing such cities as Vero Beach, Daytona Beach, Cape Canaveral, St. Augustine and Jacksonville. Farther north, it threatened such historic cities as Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina.
Storm surge biggest threat
National Hurricane Center Director Rick Knabb reminded people in the danger zone that storm surge is the biggest threat to life during a hurricane, even when the eye remains offshore.
"If you're hoping it's is just going to pass far enough offshore that this isn't a problem anymore — that is a very, very big mistake that you could make that could cost you your life," he said.
Airlines cancelled at least 4,500 flights Wednesday through Saturday, including many in and out of Orlando, where all three of the resort city's world-famous theme parks — Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and SeaWorld — closed because of the storm.
Airports in South Florida began returning to normal, however, with American Airlines seeing its first arrival at its Miami hub at 9:05 a.m.
With files from Reuters and CBC News