Dozens dead, millions without power after Helene hits southeastern US

“There is no cell phone reception here. There is no electricity,” he said.

Emergency Medical Services Director Van Taylor Jones acknowledged there have been deaths in the county and said he was unwilling to report details, in part because downed cell phone towers hampered efforts to contact next of kin.

Relatives desperately called for help on Facebook. Among those waiting for news was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her she was going to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm hit Asheville. Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, could not reach her.

“I think people are just completely stuck,” she said.

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley over the weekend, the National Hurricane Center said.

“Catastrophic” flooding

The worst flooding in a century occurred in North Carolina, where Gov. Roy Cooper called it “catastrophic” as search and rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government came to help. One community, Spruce Pine, was flooded with more than 600mm in five days.

And in Atlanta, more than 280 mm fell in 48 hours, the most rain the city has seen in two days since records began in 1878.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helene’s devastation was “overwhelming” and vowed to send help. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina and made federal funding available for affected individuals.

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 came ashore north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths were also reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Moody’s Analytics expects property damage to range from $15 billion to $26 billion. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of Helene’s total damage and economic loss in the U.S. is $95 billion to $110 billion.

Climate change has exacerbated the conditions that allow such storms to thrive. They intensify quickly in the warmer waters, sometimes turning into strong cyclones within a few hours.

Evacuations and overflowing dams

Evacuations began before the storm and continued as lakes overflowed dams, including one in North Carolina that forms a lake shown in the film Dirty dancing. Helicopters were used to rescue some people from flooded houses.

And in Newport, Tennessee, Jonah Wark waited so long to evacuate that a boat came to his aid. “Definitely a scary moment,” Wark said.

After surveying the damage by helicopter, a stunned Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger said, “Who knew a hurricane would cause so much damage in East Tennessee?”

The 11 confirmed deaths in Florida included nine people who drowned in their homes in a mandatory evacuation zone on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

None of the victims were from Taylor County, where the storm made landfall. It made landfall near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 30 kilometers northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year with almost the same ferocity.

“If you had told me there would be a storm surge [of four to five metres]“Even with the best efforts, I would have expected there would have been multiple fatalities,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday.

Taylor County in Big Bend hasn’t been directly hit by a hurricane in years. But after Idalia and two other storms in just over a year, the area is starting to feel like a hurricane highway.

“It brings home to everyone the reality of what the disasters are like now,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing village and weekend getaway spot.

Timmy Futch of Horseshoe Beach stood for the hurricane before driving to higher ground as the water reached his home. Many of the houses in the town that his grandfather helped found were reduced to piles of lumber.

“We watched our city being torn apart,” Futch said.

The aftermath

About 60 miles (100 kilometers) north, cars lined up at a free food distribution site in Perry, Florida, before dawn on Saturday amid widespread power outages.

“We’re taking it one day at a time,” said Sierra Land, who lost everything in her refrigerator when she arrived at the site with her 5- and 10-year-old sons and grandmother.

Thousands of utility workers landed in Florida in advance of the hurricane, and power had been restored to more than 1.9 million homes and businesses by Saturday. But hundreds of thousands remain without electricity there and in Georgia.

Chris Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said crews were focused on clearing routes to hospitals and ensuring supplies could be delivered to damaged communities.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year due to record-warm 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, Connecticut; and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed.