People were stranded after heavy rains from powerful Hurricane Helen left them with no shelter and awaiting rescue as clean-up operations began after a storm that killed at least 64 people, There was widespread destruction throughout the US Southeast and millions of people lost power.
“I’ve never seen as many people experiencing homelessness as I have right now,” said Genelia England of Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town along the state’s rural Big Bend, as she closed her commercial fish market as a The storm was turned into a donation site. Friends and neighbors, many of whom could not insure their homes.
Helene came ashore in the Big Bend area of Florida late Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 140 mph (225 kph).
From there, it moved rapidly through Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp said Saturday it looked like a “bomb had gone off” after seeing wind-blown homes and debris-covered highways. Weakening, Helene drenched the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, causing creeks and rivers to overflow their banks and strain dams.
Mudslides and flooding left much of western North Carolina isolated, forcing the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. All those closures caused the start of the East Tennessee State University football game against The Citadel to be delayed because it took the Buccaneers 16 hours to drive to Charleston, South Carolina.
There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than rural Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were lifted by helicopter from the roof of a hospital on Friday. And rescue efforts continued the next day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was under water.
“To say it shocked us is an understatement,” said County Sheriff Quentin Miller.
Asheville resident Mario Moraga said it was “heartbreaking” to see the damage in his Biltmore Village neighborhood and that neighbors have been going door to door to check on each other and offer support.
“There is no cell service here. There is no electricity,” he said.
While there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said he was not ready to report specifics, partly because downed cell towers hampered efforts to contact next of kin. Relatives made a desperate plea for help on Facebook.
The National Hurricane Center said the storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to loom over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday.
It caused the worst flooding in North Carolina in a century. One community, Spruce Pine, was inundated with more than 2 feet (0.6 m) of rain from Tuesday to Saturday.
And in Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell in 48 hours, the most rainfall the city has seen over two days since record-keeping began in 1878.
President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helen’s devastation was “enormous” and promised to send help. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina, making federal funding available for affected individuals.
With at least 25 deaths in South Carolina, Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone to hit the state since Hurricane Hugo struck just north of Charleston in 1989, killing 35 people. Deaths have also been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Moody’s Analytics said it expected property losses of $15 billion to $26 billion. AccuWeather’s initial estimate of the total damage and economic losses from Helene in the US is between $95 billion and $110 billion.
Evacuations began before the storm and continued as lakes overflowed dams, including one in North Carolina that created the lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Helicopters were used to rescue some people from flooded houses.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said the 11 deaths in Florida include nine people who drowned in their homes in a mandatory evacuation zone on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County.
None of the victims were from Taylor County, where the storm made landfall. It washed ashore near the mouth of the Osilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia made landfall last year.
Taylor County, located in the Big Bend of Florida, was not directly impacted by the hurricane for several years. But after Idalia and two other hurricanes in a little more than a year, the region is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway.
“It’s bringing everyone back to reality about what disasters mean now,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway.
Climate change has increased the conditions that allow such storms to flourish, rapidly intensifying over warm waters and sometimes turning into powerful cyclones in a matter of hours.
Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts above-average weather this year due to record-warm ocean temperatures.