A resident for several years, Essence Keys, 25, managed to get her two little boys to her grandmother’s house on Wednesday. On Thursday afternoon, she looked out the window to see water out front. Walking outside, it was up to her ankles. She managed to get her 7-year-old’s dirt bike off the ground, but she had time for little else; a friend had come to pick her up and take her to work.

“When I was walking out my back door, the water was already coming in my front door,” she said. She left her flooded apartment for her shift at a nursing home. It was a particularly hectic shift, since residents of another nursing home had been brought to this one, while some of her co-workers were dealing with their own flooded homes.

[Here are five ways to avoid the risks associated with floodwaters.]

She worked on Thursday, spent the night at the home, and is back at work until Friday afternoon. When the shift ends, she hopes to go get her children, whom she has not heard from for more than a day. Her grandmother has no power and no cellphone, and is in a part of town with water in the streets. Back at Trent Court, people she knows talk of water up to the fourth or fifth step in the staircases leading up from the first floor.

“I don’t have nothing but the clothes that I had on yesterday,” Ms. Keys said.

Read more about the flooding in New Bern.

A warning that the threat is going to last for days

Governor Cooper painted a grim picture of the destruction Florence was inflicting.

Wind gusts as high as 105 m.p.h. had been recorded near Wilmington. The State Highway Patrol had responded to 30 vehicle collisions and more than 100 calls for help. Hundreds of rescues had taken place already, and more were underway. Several state roads remained underwater and impassable in the coastal area.

[ Read about how to make an emergency kit, plan ahead and stay informed.]

The governor warned of forecasts that predicted 1,000-year rainfall in some areas — rainfall so severe it has a one-in-a-thousand chance of occurring in any given year. The state’s rivers are rising, and will continue to rise, in some places to record levels, Mr. Cooper said. The ground is already saturated by recent rains, he said, raising the risk of flash flooding. He expected mudslides and rockslides as the storm moved inland. “It’s getting worse,” Mr. Cooper said.