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Hurricane Helene: Southeast suffers loss and destruction as Helene leaves more than 60 dead, traps families and knocks out power

Hurricane Helene: Southeast suffers loss and destruction as Helene leaves more than 60 dead, traps families and knocks out power

Vaseline 2 months ago



CNN

Communities across the Southeast are struggling with it widespread destruction after Helene made landfall as the strongest hurricane on record, slamming into Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday and ripping through multiple states, killing at least 61 people, knocking out power to millions and leaving families in flooding. In hard-hit North Carolina, days of persistent flooding have turned roads into waterways, leaving many without basic needs and overstretched state resources. Here’s the latest:

• More than 60 deaths in 5 states: Deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. At least 10 people are dead in North Carolina, according to a news release from Governor Roy Cooper’s office Saturday evening. At least 24 people have been killed in South Carolina, including two firefighters in Saluda County, authorities said. At least 17 people have been killed in Georgia, including two by a tornado in Alamo, according to a spokesman for Governor Brian Kemp. At least 11 people have died in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday, including several people who drowned in Pinellas County. And in Craig County, Virginia, one person died in a storm-related tree fall and building collapse, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Friday.

• Dozens missing due to communication failure: More than 200 people have been rescued from flooding in North Carolina after Helene caused “biblical devastation,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Saturday. Yet more than 60 people were still missing in Buncombe County More than 150 search and rescue operations are underway across the county — which includes the hard-hit city of Asheville — as emergency responders remain overwhelmed, said county manager Avril Pinder. “This appears to be Buncombe County’s Hurricane Katrina,” Pinder said. Crews are conducting welfare checks as communications continue to be disrupted with no cell phone service in the region for at least “several days,” according to officials. Emergency calls are also extremely high, with the county receiving more than 5,500 911 calls and conducting more than 130 rapid water rescues since Thursday. East of Buncombe County, more than 20 air rescues have been conducted in McDowell County since Saturday morning. And the emergency center is being inundated with calls, many of which involve patients “trapped in severe trauma, without oxygen or without essential medical supplies.” But emergency response efforts are being tested by massive landslides, fallen trees, power lines and severely flooded roads.

• About 400 roads closed in North Carolina: In the aftermath of Helene, nearly 400 roads and dozens of highways remain closed in western North Carolina, the state’s transportation department said Saturday morning. In Buncombe County, officials urged people to stay off the roads, let emergency vehicles through and be aware of “the ground moving” as the county deals with landslides. County officials have requested additional resources from the state and federal government. Access to clean drinking water is another problem across the state. Seven water plants in Avery, Burke, Haywood, Jackson, Rutherford, Watauga and Yancey counties have closed, impacting nearly 70,000 households. A total of 17 water plants have reported that they have no power. Fifty boil water advisories are in effect in Western communities.

• More than 2 million people are still without power in South East: Helene’s remains continued to knock out power for several eastern U.S. states on Saturday, leaving more than 2.6 million customers in the dark in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us.

• ‘It looks like a bomb went off’ in GeorgiaGovernor Brian Kemp said Saturday that Helene “spared no one.” Among the 17 people who died in Georgia, Kemp said, were a mother and her month-old twin brothers, a 7-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, and a 58-year-old man. “It looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off and it’s not just here,” Kemp said.

• South Carolina ‘destroyed’ by Helene: The National Weather Service Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, said Saturday it is “devastated by the horrific flooding and widespread wind damage caused by Hurricane Helene.” The agency called it “the worst event in the history of our office” in a Facebook post on Saturday evening.

• ‘Complete destruction’ along Florida’s coast: Days after Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday night, scores of residents have been displaced, boil water warnings have been issued in multiple counties and power has been knocked out to more than 254,000 customers. “You see homes being completely destroyed,” DeSantis said Saturday. The governor said Helene has affected some of the same communities that were hit by Hurricanes Idalia and Debby. “An awful lot has been thrown at one community in just 14, 15 months,” he said. Cleanup and recovery efforts have begun across the state, including in directly affected Taylor County, where crews have cleared 90% of major roadways, the sheriff’s office said Saturday.

• Additional rain expected: Helene became a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, but rainfall is expected to continue over parts of the southern Appalachians this weekend. Additional totals of up to 1 inch are expected for areas of western North Carolina, including Asheville, and eastern Tennessee, including Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Up to 2 inches is possible for parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania through Monday. “Although rain amounts will be light, areas that received excessive rainfall from Helene may see isolated aggression from excess runoff,” the weather service said Saturday morning.

A person video looks at storm damage in Biltmore Village in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on September 28, 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Since Helene began flooding the region, neighborhoods have been turned into lakes, cars have been picked up like toys, trees have fallen like twigs and businesses have been left underwater. Piles of thick mud and floating debris blocked the streets, while torrential rains collapsed roads and swept away bridges. And there are hundreds of people left in North Carolina stranded in homes, hospitals or transportation systems, awaiting rescue.

“The priority is to get people out,” North Carolina Governor Cooper told CNN affiliate Spectrum News. “And bringing in supplies.”

But there is a barrier: “Everything is under water. It’s very difficult for them to see exactly what the problems are,” Cooper said.

As water flooded Asheville, North Carolina, on Friday, residents of an apartment complex watched as units were submerged in water.

Stevie Hollander, a 26-year-old who lives on the second floor with his sister and her fiancé, told CNN: “The water almost reached us, but luckily it went down.” Most residents of the first-floor units left before the water rushed in, but some moved to units on higher floors to stay with other residents, Hollander said.

“We all really need help here. We need water, some kind of energy, food and gas. Something.” he said, “We just don’t really know what to do.”

Floods left Hollander and his family stranded in the apartment. They tried to drive north on Saturday, but road closures made that impossible and they had to return to the apartment. The family is left with only four bottles of water and little non-perishable food, Hollander said.

In Black Mountain, North Carolina, Sofia Grace Kunst faced another problem: a landslide.

Art, who was traveling there for a week, played the card game Uno with six of her friends in a small room in a dining hall. She remembers the exact time it burst through a window and mud poured into the room on Friday: 9:10 am. Someone shouted, ‘Landslide! Everyone ran,” so they all did.

“I see a huge wave of mud, trees and rocks coming towards us,” Kunst told CNN, estimating the wave was about five feet high.

From there everything happened very quickly.

She ran into the main room of the dining hall, only to see the wall completely collapse. They fled to the dining hall porch, where many of her peers were crying, and Kunst sat there in shock, she said.

It was then that she realized she was barefoot and still had her Uno cards in hand.

The group didn’t know where to go because of the water pouring on all sides of them, but eventually they decided to trek through muddy water to get to a parking area on higher ground. After being stranded there for a while, they were able to reach a shelter,

“That’s when it hit the most people. There were many tears. It didn’t really affect me emotionally, but my body started to react. I started shaking like crazy. I felt like I had to scream or give off energy,” Kunst said.

A van sits in the water near the Biltmore Village in Asheville, North Carolina, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on September 28, 2024.

In the Asheville community, small businesses were in shambles just before October, the biggest tourist season of the year.

As the day broke on Saturday, business owner Patrick McNamara was able to get a first look at the devastation Helene left behind. McNamara has been running a small milk distribution business in Asheville for 12 years.

“The water was five feet above the dock,” McNamara said, “so the whole building was swept away.”

His company machines were strewn across the warehouse, the milk was spoiled and mud was all over the floor. McNamara estimates that he will have to throw away thousands of liters of milk.

Concerned about access to resources, McNamara said he may have to consider moving the company to another location.

As he begins a lengthy cleanup process, McNamara is confident the community will be able to pick itself back up and have a successful tourism season despite the devastation.