CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) — Hurricane Matthew has weakened slightly as it pounds Florida and crawls north along the Atlantic coast.

At 5:00 pm  Friday, the National Hurricane Center said Matthew had sustained winds of 110 mph (177 kph), making it a very powerful Category 2 storm.

At one point, Matthew reached the strongest Category 5 designation, but it has been slowly weakening as it has moved closer to Florida.

The storm left more than 300 people dead in the Caribbean and at least one person has died in Florida. More than 1 million homes and businesses are without power in the state.

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4:30 p.m.

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.

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.

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4 p.m.

President Barack Obama has declared a state of emergency in North Carolina as Hurricane Matthew wreaks havoc on the East Coast.

The declaration puts the Homeland Security Department and the Federal Emergency Management Agency in charge of disaster relief efforts in the state, including providing equipment and needed resources.

Gov. Pat McCrory says he’s about worried that the storm could lead to heavier rains than previously estimated at or near the coast, and cause power outages from high winds.

Obama has already declared states of emergency in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, the other states in Matthew’s path.

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4 p.m.

The city of Asheville may not have to endure the winds associated with Hurricane Matthew, but it’s definitely experiencing a windfall.

The Asheville Citizen-Times reports (avlne.ws/2d9cnra) that with the hurricane menacing the Carolinas’ coast, thousands of coastal residents fled their homes and vacation spots and decided to go to Asheville to enjoy the area’s attractions, and as a result, boost the local economy.

Shane Harpham, a pediatric dentist from Bluffton, South Carolina, said his wife and two young children came up on Wednesday night. He said while it wasn’t easy finding a room they found a motel and booked the last room it had.

Early October is already a popular time for travelers to visit Asheville, but adding hundreds or even thousands of evacuees has put a crunch on hotel rooms.

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4 p.m.

With Hurricane Matthew leaving South Florida largely spared, the region’s Haitian and Cuban communities are busy trying to help family and friends dealing with the storm’s devastating rampage through the Caribbean.

Haitian-American nurses and doctors who volunteered to go to Haiti were stranded at South Florida’s airports as the storm passed.

About 20 organizations collecting medicine, food, clothing and building supplies for Haiti at a Miami-area warehouse suspended activity Thursday. Sandy Dorsainvil is a Haitian-American community leader in Miami. She says volunteers eager to return to work waited in long lines at the Miami Gardens warehouse early Friday.

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3:30 p.m.

Officials say U.S. military assets are heading to Haiti to provide assistance after Hurricane Matthew killed hundreds of people in the impoverished country.

Hurricane response task force commander Rear Adm. Cedric Pringle told reporters that nine U.S. military helicopters have already arrived or will arrive later Friday, and three others could be available from a transport ship. He said that there are currently about 250 U.S. troops in Haiti and another 100 could go in over the next day or so.

Later Friday, a U.S. official said amphibious transport ship The USS Mesa Verde had been dispatched to the Haiti mission. The official said it will head for Haiti once it moves out of the way of the storm. The official was not authorized to discuss the ship’s movement publicly so spoke on condition of anonymity.

After flying over the area Friday, Pringle described the damage as “pretty extensive,” with homes and other buildings leveled. He says the main damage has come from the high winds, mudslides and flooding.

The central government’s official death toll stood at nearly 300, but authorities doing the on-ground assessment in remote corners of the southwestern peninsula said it would likely be significantly higher when the full accounting was complete.

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By Associated Press Writer Lolita C. Baldor.

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3:30 p.m.

NASA spokesman George Diller says NASA’s Kennedy Space Center has been spared major damage from Hurricane Matthew.

Diller says recovery team members won’t be out in full force until Saturday, but a preliminary inspection showed limited roof and door damage, and some water intrusion.

Diller was among 116 NASA, Air Force and contractor personnel who rode out the storm at the space center, which remained closed to everyone else. He reported some power outages, along with a loss of air conditioning and water pressure in some buildings, and scattered debris. Otherwise, the space center appeared to weather the storm fairly well, experiencing a minimal storm surge.

Kennedy is no longer an active launching site; the space shuttles have been retired for five years. Both former shuttle launch pads, however, are being refurbished, one by NASA for its future Space Launch System rockets meant to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, and the other by private company SpaceX.

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Online:

NASA: www.nasa.gov/

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3:15 p.m.

Charleston is imposing a curfew starting at midnight Friday and extending until 6 a.m. Saturday as Hurricane Matthew moves along the South Carolina coast.

Police Chief Greg Mullen told a news conference Friday that officials expect unusually high tides driven by the storm along with the torrential rains that Matthew is expected to bring. He said no cars or pedestrians will be allowed on the streets during the overnight period.

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2:45 p.m.

St. Augustine, Florida, Mayor Nancy Shaver says the 451-year-old city is experiencing widespread flooding from Hurricane Matthew. The Category 3 storm battered the city much of Friday with waves and storm surge that could top 8 feet.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Shaver said the flooding “is just going to get higher and higher and higher.”

The mayor said roughly half of St Augustine’s 14,000 residents chose to stay in their homes. No injuries or deaths had been reported as of Friday.