Hurricane Helene left dozens dead and billions of dollars in damage as it swept across a wide swath of the southeastern United States, with more than three million customers still without power while the threat of flooding remained for other residents.
The storm made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida on Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane, packing winds of 140 miles per hour (225 kilometers per hour), and moved quickly through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. , uprooting trees, damaging homes, overflowing rivers and streams and overloading dams.
Western North Carolina was virtually cut off due to mudslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other highways. There were hundreds of water rescues, but none more dramatic than the one in rural Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, where dozens of patients and workers were lifted by helicopter from the roof of a hospital surrounded by the water of an overflowing river.
The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, is expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Some flood alerts remained active in areas of the southern and central Appalachians, as well as high wind warnings for areas of Tennessee and Ohio.
Among the at least 44 killed by the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her one-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose home was hit by a falling tree. According to a count by The Associated Press, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no fears it could fail. Newport, a city of about 7,000 people in Tennessee, was also evacuated over concerns about a nearby dam, although officials later said the structure was not faulty.
In addition, tornadoes were reported in some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, which left four people seriously injured.
In Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell in 48 hours, a record for that period since records began in 1878, the Georgia State Meteorologist’s Office said on the social network X. Some neighborhoods suffered Floods so serious that the roofs of the cars barely stood out of the water.
Moody’s Analytics expects property damage to be between $15 billion and $26 billion.
Climate change has exacerbated the conditions that aggravate these types of storms, which quickly gain intensity in warmer waters and become powerful hurricanes sometimes in a matter of hours.
The president of the country, Joe Biden, said he was praying for the survivors and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headed to the affected area. FEMA mobilized more than 1,500 workers, and as of late Friday morning they had assisted in 400 rescues.
The authorities asked the trapped population to notify emergency teams and not venture to move on their own due to the possibility of live electrical cables, sewage, sharp objects and other debris in the water.
In Georgia, an electric company warned of “catastrophic” damage to public infrastructure, with more than 100 high-voltage lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of customers were left without service, said that in some places workers had to pick their way through the rubble just to determine what was left standing.
The hurricane made landfall near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 30 km (20 miles) northwest of where Idalia, which had almost the same strength, made landfall last year. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis noted that the damage caused by Helene appeared to be greater than that caused by Idalia and Hurricane Debby combined in August.
Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted this season will be above average due to record-breaking ocean temperatures.
___
Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Dánica Coto in San Juan; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.
