Hurricane Helene: The Southeast struggles with loss and destruction as Helene leaves over 60 dead, traps families and knocks out power

CNN
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Communities in the Southeast are struggling with this Great devastation after Helene The hurricane hit Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday as the strongest hurricane ever recorded and ripped through several states, killing at least 61 people, leaving millions without power and leaving families trapped in floodwaters. In hard-hit North Carolina, days of incessant flooding have turned roads into waterways, leaving many people without essential goods and straining state resources. Here’s the latest:

• Over 60 dead in 5 states: Deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. At least ten people have died in North Carolina, said a statement from Gov. Roy Cooper’s office Saturday evening. Authorities say at least 24 people have died in South Carolina, including two firefighters in Saluda County. According to a spokesman for Governor Brian Kemp, at least 17 people have died in Georgia, two of them from a tornado in the Alamo. At least 11 people have died in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday, including several people who drowned in Pinellas County. And in Craig County, Virginia, one person died in a storm-related tree fall and building collapse, Gov. Glenn Youngkin said Friday.

• Dozens missing due to communication failure: More than 200 people have been rescued from flooding in North Carolina after Helene wreaked “biblical devastation,” Gov. Roy Cooper said Saturday. Still, over 60 people were missing in Buncombe County More than 150 search and rescue operations are underway in the county – which includes the hardest-hit city of Asheville – as emergency services remain overwhelmed, said county manager Avril Pinder. “That appears to be Hurricane Katrina in Buncombe County,” Pinder said. Crews are conducting welfare checks as communications remain down and there has been no cell phone reception in the area for at least “several days,” according to officials. The number of emergency calls is also extremely high: The district has received over 5,500 emergency calls since Thursday and carried out more than 130 rapid water rescues. East of Buncombe County, over 20 air rescues have been performed in McDowell County since early Saturday morning. And the emergency room is inundated with calls, often involving patients who have “suffered severe trauma and are running out of oxygen or vital medical supplies.” But the emergency response is complicated by massive landslides, fallen trees, power lines and heavily flooded roads.

• About 400 roads closed in North Carolina: After Helene, nearly 400 roads and dozens of highways remain closed in western North Carolina, the state Department of Transportation said Saturday morning. In Buncombe County, officials urged people to stay off the roads to allow emergency vehicles through and to watch for “ground movement” as the county grapples with landslides. District officials have requested additional funding from the state and federal government. Another issue across the state is access to clean drinking water. Seven water plants in Avery, Burke, Haywood, Jackson, Rutherford, Watauga and Yancey counties are closed, affecting nearly 70,000 homes. A total of 17 waterworks have reported that they have no electricity. There are 50 boil water warnings in effect in western communities.

• More than 2 million people in the southeast remain without electricity: Helene’s remnants continued to knock out power in several states across the eastern U.S. on Saturday, leaving over 2.6 million customers in the dark in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us.

• “It looks like a bomb went off” in Georgia: Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that Helene “spared no one.” The 17 people who died in Georgia included a mother and her 1-month-old twins, a 7-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, and a 58-year-old man, according to Kemp. “It looks like a tornado exploded, it looks like a bomb exploded, and it’s not just here,” Kemp said.

• South Carolina “devastated” by Helene: The National Weather Service Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, said Saturday it was “devastated by the terrible flooding and widespread wind damage caused by Hurricane Helene.” In a Facebook post Saturday evening, the agency called it “the worst event in our office’s history.”

• “Complete annihilation” along the Florida coast: Days after Helene devastated Florida as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday evening, countless residents are displaced, there are boil water notices in several counties and power is out for more than 254,000 customers. “You see some homes just being completely destroyed,” DeSantis said Saturday. The governor said Helene hit some of the same communities affected by Hurricanes Idalia and Debby. “A lot has been done to a community in just 14, 15 months,” he said. Cleanup and recovery efforts have begun across the state, including in directly affected Taylor County, where emergency crews have cleared 90% of major roads, the sheriff’s office said Saturday.

• Additional rain expected: Helene developed into a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, but rain is expected to continue across parts of the southern Appalachian region this weekend. Additional totals of up to 1 inch are expected for areas of western North Carolina, including Asheville, and eastern Tennessee, including Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Up to 2 inches is possible for parts of Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania through Monday. “Although rainfall amounts will be light, isolated excess runoff may occur in areas that received excessive rainfall from Helene,” the weather service said Saturday morning.

Since Helene began flooding the region, she has turned neighborhoods into lakes, picked up cars like toys, snapped trees like branches and left businesses underwater. Piles of thick mud and floating debris blocked roads while torrential rains collapsed roads and washed out bridges. And it has left hundreds of people in North Carolina behind stranded in homes, hospitals or transportation systems awaiting rescue.

“The priority is to get people out,” North Carolina Gov. Cooper told CNN affiliate Spectrum News. “And bring in supplies.”

But there is a barrier: “Everything is flooded. It’s very difficult for them to pinpoint the problems,” Cooper said.

As floodwaters engulfed Asheville, North Carolina, on Friday, residents of an apartment complex watched as the units were submerged in the water.

Stevie Hollander, a 26-year-old who lives on the second floor with his sister and her fiancé, told CNN: “The water almost reached us, but luckily it went under.” Most of the residents of the first floor units left the building , before the water came in, but some moved to units on higher floors to live with other residents, Hollander said.

“We all really need help here. We need water, some kind of electricity, food, gas. Anything.” He said, “We just don’t really know what to do.”

Flooding left Hollander and his family stranded in the apartment. They tried to drive north on Saturday, but road closures made that impossible and they had to return to the apartment. The family only has four water bottles and little non-perishable food, said Hollander.

In Black Mountain, North Carolina, Sofia Grace Kunst struggled with another problem – a landslide.

Kunst, who was there on a week-long trip, was playing the card game Uno with six of her friends in a small room in a dining room. She remembers the exact time Friday when it smashed through a window and poured mud into the room: 9:10 a.m. Someone shouted, “Landslide!” Everybody run,” so they all did.

“I see this huge wave of mud, trees and rocks coming straight towards us,” Kunst told CNN, estimating it was about five to six feet high.

From then on everything happened very quickly.

She ran into the main dining room and saw the wall completely collapse. They fled to the dining room porch, where many of their peers were crying, and Kunst sat in shock, she said.

At this point she realized that she was barefoot and still had her Uno cards in her hand.

The group didn’t know where to go next as there was water flowing on all sides, but they eventually decided to make their way through muddy water to a higher parking lot. After being stranded there for a while, they managed to get to an emergency shelter.

“That’s when it hit most people. Many tears were shed. It didn’t really affect me emotionally, but my body started to react. I started shaking like crazy. I felt like I needed to scream or release energy,” Kunst said.

In Asheville Parish, small businesses lay in ruins just before October, the biggest tourist season of the year.

As day dawned Saturday, business owner Patrick McNamara got his first look at the destruction Helene had left in her wake. McNamara has operated a small milk distribution business in Asheville for 12 years.

“The flood water was four feet above the dock,” McNamara said, “so the entire building was wiped out.”

His business machines were scattered around the warehouse, the milk was spoiled and the floor was covered in inches of mud. McNamara estimates he has thousands of gallons of milk to get rid of.

McNamara was concerned about access to resources and said he may have to consider moving the business to another facility.

As he begins a lengthy cleanup process, McNamara is confident the community can come together despite the devastation and have a successful tourist season.