President tells officials they will have everything they need as more than 15,000 people remain in shelters in state

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump has promised that North and South Carolina will receive strong federal support as they recover from the devastation of Hurricane Florence, whose floodwaters continue to threaten the region.

“We’re going to be there 100%,” Trump told officials at a briefing shortly after arriving at the Marine Corps air station Cherry Point in Havelock, North Carolina. “There will be nothing left undone. You’ll have everything you need.”

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Trump, who has been criticized for his handling of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico last year, also thanked first responders for their work since Florence made landfall on Friday and recapped the efforts to get food to residents and restore power.

He was accompanied by the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen; the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) chief, Brock Long; Senators Richard Burr and Thom Tillis of North Carolina; and Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina.

More than 15,000 people remain in shelters and more than 200,000 customers are without power across North Carolina because of Florence, which came ashore as a category 1 hurricane, according to state officials.

Play Video 0:46 'One of the wettest we've ever seen, from the standpoint of water': Trump on Florence – video

Many cities and towns in the south-east of North Carolina remained underwater on Wednesday. Much of Lumberton, where the Lumber river flooded mostly lower-income housing, was still inaccessible. The evacuation shelter in the city was evacuated as floodwater rose on Monday, with many residents bussed to Pembroke, 15 miles away.

Patrice Carmichael, who was forced to leave her home in Lumberton at the weekend as floodwater rose, said she had been promised a hotel room for her, her partner and their four children, but they were still stuck in the Pembroke shelter as of Wednesday.

Goldsboro was also still flooded. Homes, farms and businesses along Route 117, which runs north through this part of the state, stood in 2ft of water on Tuesday, while stretches of the route were closed due to flooding.

Although the storm is long gone, river flooding still poses a danger to the area. The Cape Fear river was expected to crest at 61.5ft (19 meters), four times its normal height, on Wednesday in Fayetteville, a city of 200,000 near the Fort Bragg army base in the southern part of the state, according to the National Weather Service.

On Tuesday night, the majority of hotels to the north of Fayetteville were fully booked as people rushed to escape the flood.

“There is a strong potential that those who live within the 1-mile evacuation area of the Cape Fear River will be impacted by flooding,” the city said in a statement.

The city manager told CNN that 12,000 people were “in harm’s way”.

Florence has killed at least 36 people, including 27 in North Carolina, eight in South Carolina and one in Virginia. Two of the South Carolina victims were mental health patients who drowned on Tuesday when a van carrying them was swept away by floodwater.

Thousands of rescues have taken place in the Carolinas. Fire and rescue crews were waiting to go into many areas to assist with structural damage resulting from Florence, which has dumped up to 36in (91cm) of rain in parts of North Carolina since Thursday.

At least 16 rivers remained at a major flood stage, with three others set to crest in the coming days in North Carolina, the state said.

In the town of Fair Bluff, North Carolina, which has struggled to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Matthew in 2016, only about 50 residents remained on Tuesday, the Fair Bluff police chief, Chris Chafin told Reuters.

The town has largely been cut off by flooding from the still-rising Lumber river, which was expected to crest on Wednesday.

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As Florence was bearing down on the Carolinas last week, Trump reignited the controversy over his handling of Maria by disputing the official death toll of 2,975 in the US territory, which was compiled by public health experts at George Washington University. Trump said, without offering evidence, that Democrats had inflated the figure to make him look bad.

Maria also devastated the infrastructure of Puerto Rico, whose 3 million citizens are Americans but do not vote in presidential elections, and left much of the island without power for months. Critics said the Trump administration was slow to recognize the extent of the damage and slow to help.

The former basketball star Michael Jordan, a native of Wilmington, North Carolina, and the principal owner of the Charlotte Hornets of the National Basketball Association, donated $2m to the Florence recovery effort, the team said.