Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, homeless and awaiting relief, as cleanup began after a storm that killed at least 64 people, caused widespread destruction in southeastern states -United and cut off electricity to millions of people.
“I’ve never seen so many people homeless as I do right now,” said Janalea England of Steinhatchee, Fla., a small river town along the state’s rural Big Bend, while that she was turning her commercial fish market into a storm donation site. friends and neighbors, many of whom could not get insurance for their homes.
Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday evening with winds of 140 mph (225 km/h).
From there, it quickly moved to Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday it “looks like a bomb went off” after watching from the air as homes were shattered and highways covered in debris. Weakened, Helen then flooded the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, causing streams and rivers to overflow and straining dams.
Climate change has fueled Helen’s rapid intensification over the Gulf, and a warmer atmosphere will also allow the storm to dump eye-popping amounts of rain. Meteorologist Chase Cain explains the connection between climate and Helen’s potential for inland flooding.
Western North Carolina has been isolated due to landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. All of these closures delayed the start of East Tennessee State University’s football game against The Citadel because the Buccaneers’ drive to Charleston, South Carolina, took 16 hours.
There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were evacuated by helicopter from the roof of a hospital Friday. And rescues continued the next day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was underwater.
“To say it caught us off guard would be an understatement,” said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff.
Asheville resident Mario Moraga said it was “heartbreaking” to see the damage in the Biltmore Village neighborhood and that neighbors were going house to house checking on each other and offering support.
“There’s no cell service here. There is no electricity,” he said.
Although there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said he was not ready to give details, in part because downed cell phone towers hampered efforts to contact next of kin. Relatives made desperate pleas for help on Facebook.
The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, is expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.
This triggered the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina. One community, Spruce Pine, was inundated with more than two feet of rain between Tuesday and Saturday.
And in Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in any two days since record-keeping began in 1878.
President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helen’s devastation was “overwhelming” and pledged to send help. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina, making federal funding available to those affected.
With at least 25 deaths in South Carolina, Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone for the state since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it made landfall just north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths have also been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Moody’s Analytics said it expects property damage of between $15 billion and $26 billion. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of total damages and economic losses caused by Helene in the United States is between $95 billion and $110 billion.
Evacuations began before the storm and continued as lakes overtopped dams, including one in North Carolina that forms a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Helicopters were used to rescue some people from flooded homes.
Among the 11 confirmed deaths in Florida, nine people drowned in their homes in a mandatory evacuation zone on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.
None of the victims were from Taylor County, where the storm made landfall. It landed near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 30 kilometers northwest of where Hurricane Idalia struck last year with roughly the same ferocity.
Taylor County is in the Big Bend region of Florida and has gone years without being directly impacted by a hurricane. But after Idalia and two other storms in just over a year, the region is starting to resemble a hurricane highway.
“It makes everyone aware of the current disaster situation,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing village and weekend resort.
Climate change has exacerbated the conditions that allow such storms to develop, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and developing into powerful cyclones sometimes within hours.
Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year due to record ocean temperatures.
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Payne reported from Perry and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn.; and Freida Frisaro of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., contributed.
