Four electric utilities reported a total of 596,000 customers still without power. Water, and especially ice, remained crucial commodities and lines formed at stores offering supplies - many for free.
With many areas flooded with sewage-tainted water and thousands of trees on the ground, life was hardly returning to normal. But, on a muggy, torrid day, people ventured out with rakes and chain saws, and utility and municipal crews and private tree-clearing contractors plied the streets and back roads.
"We're so sophisticated in this age of technology and science, but Mother Nature comes through and we're back to 400 B.C.," said Linda Daigle, clearing foliage from her lawn yesterday.
Hurricane Fran slammed into coastal North Carolina late Thursday and turned north, cutting a capricious swath of destruction as far inland as Raleigh and Winston-Salem before flooding Virginia and West Virginia with heavy rain.
The storm and its aftereffects killed at least 22 people - 17 of them in North Carolina - mostly by falling trees, flooding and traffic accidents. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had declared 34 North Carolina counties disaster areas as of yesterday afternoon.
A 60-member team on Topsail Island, in the hardest-hit coastal region, searched for five people reported missing, emergency officials said.
In Raleigh, rescuers searched for 17-year-old Jackson Edward Griffin, who disappeared Saturday while swimming with a friend in swollen Crabtree Creek.
On evacuated, sealed-off North Topsail Beach, state Emergency Management spokesman Tom Hegele described by telephone a scene of devastation: trailers stacked atop each other, collapsed houses, cars buried in sand.
A dazed Glenn Sasser, a year-round resident, wandered the Surf City beach yesterday searching for his home.
"It's just gone. I had an oceanfront house and now I can't find it," Sasser said. "I just bought the house in April. I was spared by Bertha, but it's just gone."
Nearby, Mary Kulp sobbed quietly as she approached her cottage and sat on what used to be the roof of her best friend's house next door.
"Oh, my God," she said. "This is terrible."
Evacuees jammed hotels across the state's central region. One Raleigh Ramada Inn also held 62 tree surgeons from Alabama.
The Winn-Dixie supermarket chain gave away six truckloads of ice in Raleigh alone during the weekend before running out, and was still handing out water - two gallon bottles per adult - yesterday afternoon.
The hardest-hit electrical utility was Carolina Power & Light, which serves the eastern part of the state; it reported 432,000 customers without power as of yesterday morning. Four other utilities reported a total of 164,000 customers out.
In Washington, Amtrak said flooding, debris and damage to tracks and signal systems had caused major delays and detours to its service along the East Coast.
The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, in the heart of the hardest-hit area, told students not even to approach the area until after noon today.
Though the coast was the most devastated, the Raleigh-Durham area, one of North Carolina's most populous regions and a place accustomed to experiencing only the periphery of tropical storms, suffered major damage.
In suburban neighborhoods, roads were thick with branches and repair trucks, and residents busy cleaning up their property and themselves.
Marilyn Bara emerged from neighbor Richard Morrison's house in a white bathrobe, having just partaken in a luxury - a warm shower, courtesy of the Morrisons' gas-fueled water heater.
"We're a pretty together neighborhood to begin with, and now more so," Bara said. "We've shared salmon and bagels. Now we're sharing showers."
AP PHOTO
Nancy Tatum paddles her canoe down Cape Fear Drive in the overflow of the Cape Fear River yesterday near Burgaw, N.C.