Hurricane Florence nears Carolina coast; more than 1 mn people told to flee

Tens of thousands of homes and businesses could be flooded in North Carolina alone

Hurricane Florence, growing in size despite its weakening winds, churned ever closer to the US East Coast on Wednesday as evacuations expanded south from the Carolinas into Georgia to counter the threat of deadly high seas and calamitous floods.

The center of Florence, a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, is expected to strike North Carolina late Thursday or early Friday and could drift southwest along the coast before turning inland, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 120 miles per hour (193 km per hour), down from