With Florence looming in the Atlantic, the city’s residents are defiant, stubborn, and asking for divine intervention to get through yet another Carolina hurricane

After an hour-long wait outside on a balmy end-of-summer morning, Christian Endreson, 68, picked up the three pieces of plywood he needed to board up his daughter’s home and got in line to pay.

Hurricane Florence: North Carolina fears possible environmental disaster Read more

He was not alone. Nearly a hundred people joined him in line for last minute supplies of plywood at The Home Depot in Wilmington, North Carolina, early on Wednesday as Hurricane Florence barreled towards the Carolina coast.

The storm weakened to a category 3 hurricane on Wednesday and forecasters expect it to weaken further as it nears the shore, but Florence was still forecast to be “an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it nears the US”.

Play Video 0:49 One million told to flee as Hurricane Florence bears down on US coast – video

The system was expected to make landfall early on Saturday – a predicted timing that keeps moving back incrementally as the storm chugs slowly across ocean waters.

Having survived Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey in 2012, Endreson is refusing to leave his family’s home now.

“Somebody has to stay behind to protect [our] interests,” he said, referring to the hundred-year-old house he shares with his daughter and son-in-law. “It has weathered many storms and I feel confident, but we’re not arrogant about it either,” he added.

His five daughters are spread out over the country, nearly all of them having survived the likes of Hurricane Harvey in Galveston, Hurricane Irma in Fort Lauderdale last year and Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey, Endreson said.

As Endreson lined up to pay, a Home Depot associate came over the speaker and asked customers to remain calm, not be rude to employees, and not to panic before the store closed late morning. There was plenty of plywood in today, she added, before signing off.

Walmart employee Joseph Smith, 52, said the store went through 60 pallets of water in 30 minutes as residents rushed in for supplies.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Empty shelves at Walmart in Wilmington. ‘Canned meat, water, and batteries are what people are looking for right now,’ said an employee. Photograph: Khushbu Shah/The Guardian

“Canned meat, water and batteries are what people are looking for right now,” Smith said, noting he had had to restock those the most since the start of the week. There was plenty of bread still, he added. He was working the last shift before the store closed in the afternoon. “I don’t pay any attention to the hurricanes,” he added as he unloaded fish sticks into the freezer bin, “I’ve always had to work.”

Meanwhile, down at the nearby coast, Matthew Parr, 34, finished his last surf on Wrightsville Beach.

He has lived in Wilmington his whole life and was going to hunker down inland at his house.

“North Carolina gets hit a lot,” he said as he loaded his surfboard on to the back of his red pickup truck.

Parr estimated he had lived through five hurricanes in this small beach town. Pointing to a friend in the passenger seat of his vehicle, Parr said he was a property insurance agent who believed he had probably gotten a couple of hundred calls in the previous two days as homeowners in the region imagine the potential damage Florence can wreak on their homes and businesses.

Across the street, the Redix clothing store was boarded up with the names of past hurricanes: Bertha, Fran, Matthew and Irene daubed on the wood. “Go home, Flo” a black spray-painted sign said on a vacation rental office’s boarded-up door down the street.

A mailman drove by, delivering mail to now shuttered homes.

Wrightsville Beach, unlike the town of Wilmington, is under the mandatory evacuation order.

Police were allowing residents on and off the beach until Wednesday evening to secure their homes and remove belongings before the mandatory came into effect curfew that night.

Stevie Cline, 25, stood on a patio overlooking the half-empty marina, while waiting for her brother-in-law, who planned to stay put, hoping to reopen his business soon after the storm. Cline beckoned an approaching boat to fill up on gas, sympathizing with its owner’s quest for fuel.

“I had to go to five different gas stations the other day,” she recalled, but was quick to point out neighbors had been supportive. The owner of the boat dock she was standing over let her fill up on boat gas, as she calls it, but he did charge her double, she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Redix clothing store is boarded up with the names of past hurricanes: Bertha, Fran, Matthew and Irene. Photograph: Khushbu Shah/The Guardian

With Florence looming, the city’s residents were defiant, stubborn, and asking for divine intervention to get through yet another Carolina hurricane.

Because of her 10-year-old son and a six-week-old pitbull she’s fostering, Jackie Sage, 40, didn’t want to be stuck in the car so she hoped her house would hold up. Florence is the first major hurricane she and her family will weather, having moved to a house on the beach two years ago from Cincinnati.

“Power to the prayer,” she says flashing a smile and a thumbs up after loading up her generator and putting gasoline in the car before driving back to her beach home.