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Communities in the Southeast are grappling with widespread devastation after Helene made landfall as the strongest hurricane on record, slamming into Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday and devastating several states, killing at least 61 people, disrupting the electricity to millions of people and trapping families in floodwaters.
In hard-hit North Carolina, days of relentless flooding have turned roads into floodways, leaving many without basic necessities and straining state resources. Here’s the latest:
* Over 60 deaths in 5 states: Deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. At least 10 people have died in North Carolina, a statement from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said Saturday evening. At least 24 have died in South Carolina, including two firefighters in Saluda County, authorities said. In Georgia, at least 17 people died, two of them killed by a tornado in the Alamo, according to a spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp. In Florida, at least 11 people have died, 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 communications outages: More than 200 people were rescued from floodwaters in North Carolina after Helene wreaked “biblical devastation,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Saturday. However, more than 60 people were missing in Buncombe County and more than 150 search and rescue operations were underway in the county – which includes the hard-hit city of Asheville – as emergency services continue to be overwhelmed, the county manager said Avril Pinder. “This appears to be Buncombe County’s Hurricane Katrina,” Pinder said. Crews are carrying out health checks as communications continue to be disrupted, with no cell phone service in the region for at least “several days,” according to officials. Emergency call volumes 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 early Saturday morning. And the emergency center is inundated with calls, many of which concern patients “trapped with severe trauma, running out of oxygen or essential medical supplies.” But emergency response efforts are challenged by massive landslides, toppled trees, power lines and severely flooded roads.
* About 400 roads closed in North Carolina: Following Helene’s crash, nearly 400 roads and dozens of highways remain closed in western North Carolina, the state Department of Transportation said Saturday morning. In Buncombe County, officials urged people to stay off roads to allow emergency vehicles to pass and to be aware of “moving ground” as the county deals with landslides. County officials have requested additional resources from the state and federal governments. Access to clean drinking water is another issue across the state. Seven water systems in Avery, Burke, Haywood, Jackson, Rutherford, Watauga and Yancey counties are closed, impacting nearly 70,000 households. A total of 17 water systems reported having no electricity. There are 50 boil water notices in effect in Western communities.
* More than 2 million remain without power in the Southeast: Remnants of Helene continued to knock out power in several eastern U.S. states on Saturday, with more than 2.6 million customers left in the dark in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us.
* ‘It feels like a bomb went off’ in Georgia: Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that Helene “spared no one.” Among the 17 people who died in Georgia were a mother and her month-old twins, a 7-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, and a 58-year-old man, according to Kemp. “It looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off and it didn’t just happen here,” Kemp said.
* South Carolina is ‘devastated’ by Helene: The National Weather Service in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, said Saturday that it is “devastated by 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 Saturday night.
* ‘Complete cancellation’ along Florida coast: Days after Helene hit Florida Thursday evening as a Category 4 hurricane, countless residents are displaced, boil water advisories are in effect in several counties and power is interrupted for over 254,000 customers. “You see complete destruction of homes,” DeSantis said Saturday. The governor said Helene impacted some of the same communities hit by Hurricanes Idalia and Debby. “This was a huge amount of damage to a community in just 14, 15 months,” he said. Cleanup and recovery efforts have begun across the state, including directly affected Taylor County, where crews have cleared 90% of major roads, the sheriff’s office said Saturday.
*Additional rain expected: Helene became a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, but rain is expected to continue this weekend across parts of the southern Appalachian region. 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 portions of Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania through Monday. “Although precipitation amounts will be light, areas that received excessive precipitation from Helene may experience an isolated bout of excessive runoff,” the weather service said Saturday morning.
“We all really need help here.”
Since Helene began flooding the region, it has turned neighborhoods into lakes, scooped up cars like toys, snapped trees like twigs, and left businesses underwater. Piles of thick mud and floating debris blocked roads while torrential rain collapsed roads and washed away bridges. And it has left hundreds of people in North Carolina stranded in homes, hospitals or transportation systems, waiting for rescue.
“The priority is getting people out,” North Carolina Gov. Cooper told CNN affiliate Spectrum News. “And get supplies.”
But there is a barrier: “Everything is flooded. It’s very difficult for them to see exactly what the problems are,” Cooper said.
As floodwaters hit 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 boyfriend, told CNN, “the water almost reached us but luckily it went down.” Most residents in first-floor units left before the water rushed in, but some moved to units on higher floors to be with other residents, Hollander said.
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“We all really need help here. We need water, electricity, food, gas. Nothing.” He said, “We really don’t know what to do.”
Floodwaters left Hollander and his family stranded in the apartment. On Saturday they attempted to head north, but the road closure made this impossible and they had to return to the apartment. The family was left with only four bottles of water and little nonperishable food, Hollander said.
In Black Mountain, North Carolina, Sofia Grace Kunst faced another problem: a landslide.
Kunst, who was there on a weeklong trip, was playing the card game Uno with six of his friends in a small room within a dining hall. He remembers the exact time a window shattered and mud poured into the room on Friday: 9:10 a.m. Someone yelled, “Landslide! Everyone runs,” so everyone did.
“I see this giant wave like mud and trees and rocks coming towards us,” Kunst told CNN, estimating it to be about five or six feet high.
From then on everything happened very quickly.
She ran into the main dining room, only to see the wall completely collapse. They fled to the dining room porch, where many of her peers were crying, and Kunst was shocked, she said.
At that point she realized she was barefoot and still had her Uno cards in her hand.
The group didn’t know where to go due to water flowing on all sides, but they eventually decided to walk through the muddy water to reach a parking lot on higher ground. After being stuck there for a while, they managed to reach a shelter,
“That’s when it hit the most people. There were a lot of tears. For me, it didn’t really affect me emotionally, but my body started to react. I started shaking like crazy. I felt like I had to, like, scream or let the energy out,” Kunst said.
The deluge “wiped out” North Carolina businesses ahead of the tourist season
In the Asheville community, small businesses were left in shambles just before October, the biggest tourist season of the year.
At dawn Saturday, businessman Patrick McNamara got his first look at the destruction left in Helene’s wake. McNamara has operated a small milk distribution business in Asheville for 12 years.
“The flood waters were four feet above the pier,” McNamara said, “So the whole building was swept away.”
His business machinery was strewn across the warehouse, spoiled milk and inches of mud piled up on the floor. McNamara estimates he will have to get rid of thousands of gallons of milk.
McNamara, concerned about access to resources, said he may have to consider moving the business to another facility.
As a long cleanup process begins, McNamara is confident that the community will be able to rebuild and have a successful tourist season despite the devastation.
[CNN]The post-Helene aftermath: Southeast grapples with loss, destruction as hurricane leaves more than 60 dead, traps families, knocks out electricity appeared first on TheConclaveNg.
