At least 17 dead, including 3-month-old baby from Hurricane Florence

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The death toll from Hurricane Florence rose to 17 Sunday after a 3-year-old died when a pine tree crashed into a mobile home, officials said.

The large pine tree split the mobile home down its center, Police Capt. Jon Leatherwood said. The tragedy happened around 12:45 p.m., the Gaston Gazette reported. The paper identified the child as Kade Gill. Leatherwood said the boy's father and mother were home but not hurt.

The boy’s home in Dallas is about 240 miles west of where Hurricane Florence made landfall Friday in Wrightsville Beach, Gaston County manager Earl Mathers said. 

Officials blamed rain and wind from the storm’s remnants on the falling tree, county spokesman James McConnell told The Associated Press.

The remnants of Florence have pounded Gaston County with heavy rainfall since Friday night, the Gazette reported. Before Gill’s death, no serious injuries or deaths were reported in the county.

Southeast of Gaston, in Union County on Sunday night, officials failed an attempt to rescue a 1-year-old child in a vehicle who was ultimately swept away in floodwaters, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Rescue officials saved an adult who was in the vehicle. WBTV reported that rescue vehicles were driving away from the search area before midnight, indicating they had called off the search. It was not immediately clear whether the search would resume in the morning.

As Florence pushed further inland through the weekend, flash flood watches were posted in Virginia and southern West Virginia. The National Weather Service has issued the watch through Monday evening in several West Virginia counties.

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Four Things You Need to Know About Hurricane Florence

 

HIGHLIGHTS:  Here are the big updates on Hurricane Florence, which made landfall on Friday in North Carolina:  At least 18 people have died . . . and it was downgraded to a tropical depression as the winds slowed down early on Sunday, but that doesn't mean the rain and flooding are going to stop.

 

 

FULL STORY:  Hurricane Florence made landfall on Friday in North Carolina.  Here are the four things you need to know . . .

 

 

1.  At least 18 people have died from the hurricane so far in North and South Carolina.

                                 

 

2.  And around 740,000 homes and businesses still don't have power.

 

 

3.  Florence was downgraded to a tropical depression as the winds slowed down early on Sunday . . . but that doesn't mean the rain and flooding are going to stop.

 

 

4.  And that's why the National Weather Service called Florence a "storm of a lifetime."

 

 

It's massive, it moved slowly to keep hitting the same areas over and over, it traveled inland, which caused extreme flooding . . . and it's still going strong even now that the winds have slowed down.