The South Carolina Governor has ordered a mandatory evacuation on Monday of up to one million residents of the US state's eastern coast ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Florence.
"This is a very dangerous hurricane," Governor Henry McMaster has said.
"We do not want to risk one South Carolina life in this hurricane".
Florence, a Category 4 hurricane, is expected to make landfall in South Carolina or North Carolina on Thursday.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) says Florence has the makings of an "extremely dangerous" meteorological event, the BBC reports.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's office described Florence as possibly the state's "most significant hurricane event in decades," and warned of "catastrophic inland flooding, high winds and possible widespread power outages."
It added: "The largest threat to life from hurricanes is not the high winds. Flooding is the deadliest result of these storms."
