CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - Authorities say an elderly couple appears to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning while running a generator after Hurricane Matthew, raising the U.S. death toll from the storm to 4.
A post on the St. Lucie County Fire District's Facebook page says rescuers responded to couple's home Friday morning after neighbors found them not breathing. They were taken to a nearby hospital, where county spokesman Erick Gill says they later died.
Officials say the couple had been running a generator inside their garage throughout the storm.
Officials didn't immediately naming the couple. Two women in Florida were also killed in separate accidents.
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8 p.m.
A man who stayed on a Georgia island to ride out Hurricane Matthew says "trees are bending over" and it's "raining sideways" as the storm approaches the Georgia-Florida line.
Steve Todd said he and a friend ventured out in a truck after dark Friday to pick up a couple of buddies who had become frightened of rapidly worsening conditions on Tybee Island. He said they were all going back to his third-floor condominium to spend the night.
Local officials ordered a mandatory evacuation for Tybee on Wednesday, but some residents insisted on staying put. The hurricane's center was expected to pass early Saturday.
Todd said he doesn't regret his decision, "but I'm not going to lie. There's a little bit of nervous tension right now."
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6:45 p.m. (Story continues below)
Officials in Florida are cutting off all access to beachside portions of Flagler County after Hurricane Matthew washed away a portion of State Road A1A.
A news release says emergency workers will begin entering the area to rescue those who did not leave.
"This is not a curfew. No one will be permitted to enter the barrier island," Flagler County public safety emergency manager Steve Garten said in the release. "This will be enforced by the Flagler County Sheriff's Office."
A curfew will begin at 7 p.m. Friday on the mainland portions of the county.
"We don't want anyone on the beachside who doesn't need to be there," Flagler County Administrator Craig Coffey said in the release. "We need to be able to get an assist those people who are in the most need."
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4:45 p.m.
More than 1.1 million people are now without power in Florida after Hurricane Matthew steadily grinded its way up the east coast.
State officials released updated totals late Friday that showed the powerful storm had knocked out electricity over a long coastal stretch of the peninsula. One of the hardest hit areas is Volusia County where nearly 258,000 customers - 92 percent of all customers - were without power.
Nearly 200,000 people in Brevard County, the home to Cape Canaveral, were also without power along with nearly 132,000 customers in the Jacksonville area.
But the fury of the storm was strong enough that it has also caused outages in Central Florida. Nearly 150,000 customers who live in the Orlando area are without electricity.
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4:30 p.m. (Story continues below)
Emergency officials are reporting the first death in the U.S. directly caused by Hurricane Matthew.
Volusia County emergency management director Jim Judge says a tree fell on a woman's house in the county, which includes the city of Daytona Beach. Judge says her family took her to a hospital, where she Family took her to hospital, where she died.
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4 p.m. (Story continues below updated feed of ABC's Good Morning America's tweets)
The steady march of Hurricane Matthew has left more than 1 million customers in Florida without power.
State officials released updated totals on Friday that showed that the powerful Category 3 storm had knocked out electricity over a wide stretch of the state's eastern coast. Most of the customers in Flagler and Volusia County - the home to Daytona Beach - were without power. Other hard hit areas include Brevard and Indian River counties.
The storm was strong enough to also cause outages in Central Florida. More than 100,000 who live in the Orlando area are without electricity.
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4 p.m.
Several more communities on the South Carolina coast are imposing curfews as the winds and rains of Hurricane Matthew approach the state. The worse of the storm is expected to move in overnight and Matthew is expected to be just off Charleston about daybreak as a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mph winds.
Charleston, North Charleston, and Mount Pleasant are all imposing curfews from midnight Friday through 6 a.m. on Saturday. Officials say they don't want people driving or walking around while law officers and emergency workers have to deal with issues related to the storm.
In Beaufort County a curfew will be in effect from dusk Friday through dawn on Saturday.
