A woman and her baby were among the first casualties when a tree fell on their house, contributing to a death toll that US media said had reached 13 -- 10 in North Carolina and three in South Carolina, according to CNN.

Florence made landfall Friday as a Category 1 hurricane but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, even as it continued to wreak havoc along the East Coast, downing trees and power lines and forcing 20,000 people to flee to shelters.

On Saturday some residents tried to return home, driving through flooded highways and armed with chainsaws to clear fallen pine trees that covered the road.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper warned against such behavior as roads became increasingly dangerous.

"All roads in the state right now are at risk of floods," he said. "As rivers keep rising and rain keeps falling, the flooding will spread. More and more inland counties are issuing mandatory evacuations to get people to safety quickly."

He earlier said the storm system "is unloading epic amounts of rainfall: in some places, measured in feet, not inches."

In a separate briefing, Steve Goldstein of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said some areas have already received two feet of rain and could expect up to 20 inches more as the system moved "slowly, nearly stationary" over eastern North Carolina.

In New Bern, a riverfront city near the North Carolina coast that saw storm surges of up to 10 feet (three meters), residents took stock of the damage after flood waters began receding and authorities rescued hundreds of people who had been stranded.

Charles Rucker, a retired teacher, had only spent five nights in his newly-purchased house, built in 1830, when Florence struck.

"It was like a bullet train coming through the living room. Nothing I ever experienced before, I was truly scared," he told AFP.

"We have 4,200 damaged homes," Mayor Dana Outlaw told CNN.

The doors of many houses suffered so much wind damage they appeared to have been kicked in, while the city's beloved fiber-glass bear statues, which are sponsored by local businesses, were floating down streets.

In one piece of good news, authorities said 16 wild ponies on hurricane-struck Ocracoke Island, located off the North Carolina coast, were safe.

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