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Flooding Threat Remains From Florence; Congress Considers Aid Package

Street signs protrude through floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in Nichols, S.C. As of Friday, virtually the entire town was flooded and inaccessible except by boat, just two years after it was flooded by Hurricane Matthew. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

As Congress considers a relief package to North Carolina and other states battered by Hurricane Florence, coastal residents are being reminded that the danger from the storm isn't over.

The aid would total almost one $1.7 billion dollars in new money to assist in the recovery from Florence.

It would likely come in the form of grants to states to help rebuild housing and public works and help businesses as they recover from the storm.

Lawmakers are already facing a deadline this week to fund the government before the Oct. 1 start of the budget year, and members of Congress will try to act on the disaster relief along with separate legislation to fund the government.

Thousands of coastal residents were told over the weekend that they may need to leave their homes because rivers are still rising more than a week after Hurricane Florence made landfall.

In North Carolina, five river gauges were still at major flood stage and five others were at moderate flood stage, according to National Weather Service.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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