MIAMI (AP) — Like hurricanes Harvey and Katrina before it, Florence will be remembered for unleashing a staggering amount of water over a vast area. The flooding unfolded just as forecasters expected, but many residents in the Carolinas still seemed caught off guard as they were plucked off a vehicle’s roof or pulled by boat from their flooded homes. Whether they were just stubborn, short of resources to leave or believed they had already seen worse devastation, all will be haunted by what the water has swept away.

By the numbers

Storm deaths: Florence is being blamed for at least 32 deaths in three states

Heavy rains: Nearly 36 inches of rain has fallen over Elizabethtown, North Carolina, and other towns have seen roughly 30 inches of rainfall since Thursday

High water: The Cape Fear River is set to crest at 62 feet on Tuesday

In the dark: About 500,000 outages, mostly in North Carolina

Damage estimates: $17 billion to $22 billion in lost economic output and property damage, according to economists at Moody’s Analytics

Evacuations: Tens of thousands ordered out of communities along North Carolina’s steadily rising rivers

To the rescue: Over 1,000 search-and-rescue personnel with 36 helicopters and over 200 boats were working in North Carolina, and the Defense Department assigned 13,500 military personnel to help relief efforts

Safe now: North Carolina’s governor says 2,600 people and 300 animals had been rescued

Blocked: 1,200 North Carolina roads closed, including 357 primary roads

City underwater: 4,300 homes in New Bern, North Carolina, inundated by flooding, or one-third of the entire number of homes in the city

Grounded: about 200 U.S. flights canceled Monday, down sharply from the 3,500 canceled from Wednesday through Sunday

Florence’s victims

Officials in the Carolinas are worried about what deaths are still to come amid the swelling rivers and flooding from Florence’s crawl across both states.

Wilmington gets supplies

One of North Carolina’s largest cities still is mostly cut off by floodwaters, so food, water and tarps are being brought into Wilmington by big military trucks and helicopters. More than 60 percent of homes and businesses were without power, and crews have completed about 700 rescues in the county where Wilmington is located.

Save homes or a highway?

A wall of concrete barriers and plastic sheets is being built along U.S. Highway 501 to save the main road into Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, from going underwater. Residents in nearby Conway worry that’s going to send water from the rising Waccamaw River to flood their homes instead.

Explaining the danger

Experts say people likely got complacent about Florence because of a scale that only categorizes hurricanes by wind strength. Water is responsible for the vast majority of deaths in hurricanes and tropical storms, but that hazard isn’t included in the system forecasters used when they described the storm as a “Category 1 hurricane” at landfall.

Recalculating

Relying just on a smartphone to steer out of a disaster zone is not a smart idea. After some navigation apps or in-car map directions sent people in North Carolina onto roads that got flooded or blocked by debris, Google-owned Waze said it was working with local governments and its own community of volunteer map editors to mark closures.