At least 44 dead across 5 states, as Hurricane Helene rips through southeastern U.S.
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia all reported to have seen fatalities
Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 44 people, snapping towering oaks like twigs and tearing apart homes as rescue crews launched desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.
Among those killed were three firefighters, a woman and her one-month-old twins and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. The deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, according to The Associated Press.
The Category 4 hurricane knocked out power to some hospitals in southern Georgia, and Gov. Brian Kemp said authorities used chainsaws to clear debris and open up roads.
The storm had maximum sustained winds of 225 km/h when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida's rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida's Panhandle and peninsula meet.
Moody's Analytics said Friday it expects $15 billion to $26 billion US in property damage.
The wreckage extended hundreds of kilometres north to northeast Tennessee, where a "dangerous rescue situation" by helicopter unfolded after 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital as waters rapidly flooded the facility. Everyone was rescued and no one was left at the hospital as of late Friday afternoon, according to Ballad Health.
In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie Dirty Dancing overtopped a dam and surrounding neighbourhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People were also evacuated from Newport, Tenn., a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure hadn't failed.
Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, N.C., that critically injured four people.
Atlanta received a record 28.24 centimetres of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia's Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. The previous mark of 24.36 centimetres was set in 1886.
Some neighbourhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.
'Heartbreaking': Florida town struck for 2nd straight year
Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours.
When Laurie Lilliott pulled onto her street in Dekle Beach, Fla., after Helene plowed through, she couldn't see the roofline of her home beyond the palm trees. It had collapsed, torn apart by Helene's pounding storm surge, one corner still precariously propped up by a piling.
"It took me a long time to breathe," Lilliott said.
As she surveyed the damage, her name and phone number were still inked on her arm in permanent marker, an admonition by Taylor County officials to help identify recovered bodies in the storm's aftermath. The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.
All five who died in one Florida county were in neighbourhoods where residents had been told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up hiding in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door to door in flooded areas.
More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks.
Video on social media showed sheets of rain coming down and siding coming off buildings in Perry, Fla., near where the storm made landfall. A news station showed a home that had been overturned, and many communities established curfews.
Also in Perry, the hurricane peeled off the brand-new roof of a church that had just been replaced after Hurricane Idalia last year.
When the water rose up to Kera O'Neil's knees inside her Hudson, Fla., home, she knew it was time to escape.
"There's a moment where you are thinking, 'If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have much room to breathe,' " she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.
In Cedar Key, Fla., Kegan Ward described the terror of tree limbs falling as the storm hit: "I didn't know what I was going to wake up to."
Federal, state and local responses
U.S. President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors as the head of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency has deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they had helped with 400 rescues by late morning.
In Tampa, Fla., some areas could be reached only by boat.
Officials elsewhere warned that the water could contain live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.
"If you are trapped and need help please call for rescuers — DO NOT TRY TO TREAD FLOODWATERS YOURSELF," the sheriff's office in Citrus County, Fla., warned in a Facebook post.
More than three million homes and businesses were without power in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina as of late Friday, according to poweroutage.us. The site also showed outages as far north as Ohio and Indiana due to Helene's rapid northward movement throughout the day.
In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of "catastrophic" damage to Georgia's utility infrastructure. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40 per cent of homes and businesses were without power, said crews needed to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.
The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River on Florida's Gulf Coast, about 32 kilometres northwest of where Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appeared to be greater than the combined damage of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.
"It's tough and we understand that. We also understand that this is a resilient state," DeSantis said at a news conference in storm-damaged St. Pete Beach, Fla.
Soon after it crossed over land, Helene weakened to a tropical storm and later to a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters said it continued to produce catastrophic flooding.
A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out a section of an interstate at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.
Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 centre received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.
"This is something that we're going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come," Cole said.
