A solo yachtsman whose sailboat was rolled and dismasted in an Indian Ocean storm during a round-the-world race, has been rescued four days after calling for help.

Abhilash Tomy, a 39-year-old commander in the Indian navy, was taken from his smashed boat, Thuriya, approximately 1,900 miles west of Australia by a French fisheries patrol boat.

"Tomy was taken out of his yacht on a stretcher. He is conscious, and he is safe," an Indian navy spokesman Captain D.K. Sharma told reporters.

Krista Holland wanders past huddles of people at a storm shelter in Chapel Hill, N.C. Some are wearing Red Cross vests; others are in bathrobes and pajamas. The Wilmington principal is looking for any of her students who may have evacuated to the shelter before Hurricane Florence made landfall.

She recognizes a young man wearing earbuds.

"You remember me," the longtime educator says. "Ms. Holland?"

In the days after a flood recedes, there's a scene that plays out repeatedly. House after house looks like it's gotten violently ill and vomited all of its waterlogged possessions out on to the lawn.

"It's just heartbreaking," says Jerry Gray, 75, while sitting in his front yard in Kinston, North Carolina. What used to be his worldly goods are strewn on the lawn around him-- wet mattresses, broken furniture, soggy clothes.

"I've been here 16 years," Gray says with a sigh.