The death toll from the aftermath of the powerful Storm Helene has reached at least 53, according to authorities, as responders, hindered by washed-out bridges and debris-laden roads, conducted house-to-house searches for survivors in the ravaged areas of several eastern US states.
Reports from local authorities, compiled by AFP, indicate that South Carolina recorded at least 22 fatalities, followed by Georgia with 17, Florida with 11, North Carolina with two, and Virginia with one.
Helene made landfall in Florida late Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane, subsequently moving northward and gradually weakening, yet leaving a trail of rare destruction in its wake.
This morning, repair crews were already on the scene, and the National Weather Service announced that conditions would “continue to improve today following the catastrophic flooding over the previous two days.”
As of mid-afternoon Saturday, nearly three million customers remained without electricity across ten states, stretching from Florida in the southeast to Indiana and Ohio in the midwest, according to poweroutage.us.
Helene left a scene of chaos, with overturned boats scattered in harbors.
The storm initially struck Florida’s northern Gulf shore with powerful winds reaching 225 kilometers per hour.
Even after weakening into a post-tropical cyclone, it continued to cause significant damage.
Record flood levels had posed a risk of breaching several dams, but emergency officials in Tennessee confirmed that the Nolichucky Dam, which had been close to failure, was no longer at risk and residents downstream could return home safely.
Severe flooding was reported in Asheville, a city located in western North Carolina.
Governor Ray Cooper described it as “one of the worst storms in modern history” to impact his state.
Some South Carolina residents, familiar with hurricane impacts, stated that Helene was the worst storm to strike in 40 years.
Reports surfaced of remote towns in the Carolina mountains experiencing power outages and lack of cell service, with their roads washed away or covered in mudslides.
In Cedar Key, a small island community of 700 inhabitants off Florida’s northwest coast, the full extent of the hurricane’s destructive power was on display.
Officials had urged residents in Helene’s path to follow evacuation orders, with National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan warning that the storm surge was ‘unsurvivable.’
Numerous pastel-colored wooden homes were destroyed, the casualties of record storm surges and violent winds.
“I’ve lived here my entire life, and it pains me to see this. We haven’t really had a break,” lamented Gabe Doty, a Cedar Key official, referencing two earlier hurricanes in the last year.
Biden labeled the damage as ‘overwhelming.’
Among the deceased in South Carolina were two firefighters, officials confirmed.
Among Georgia’s 17 fatalities, an emergency responder was among those lost, according to state officials.
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis stated that the storm’s damage surpassed that of hurricanes Idalia and Debby, which impacted the same area southeast of Tallahassee in the past 13 months.
“It’s a real gut punch to those communities,” DeSantis told Fox News.
On the affluent Anna Maria Island, located south of Tampa, nearly every ground-level home was inundated, and a coastal road was buried under several feet of sand, as reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
In the Tennessee town of Erwin, a dramatic rescue operation unfolded, where over 50 patients and staff trapped on a hospital roof by rising floodwaters had to be evacuated by helicopter.
In Georgia, residents were seen tossing buckets of water out of their homes following the flooding.
The remnants of the weakened storm continued to bring rainfall to the lower midwest on Saturday.
In a statement released on Saturday, President Joe Biden characterized Helene’s destruction as “overwhelming.”
He announced the deployment of additional response personnel and sent Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, to Florida to assess the damage.
FEMA currently has over 800 personnel assigned to the affected states.
September has proven to be an unusually wet month globally, with scientists linking some extreme weather events to human-induced climate change.
