US southeast faces daunting cleanup from Helene as death toll rises

By Rich McKay, Joseph Ax and Andrew Hay

ATLANTA (Reuters) -Authorities across the southeastern U.S. faced the daunting task on Saturday of cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, one of the most powerful and perhaps costliest storms to hit the country, as the death toll continued to rise.

At least 47 deaths were reported by early Saturday, and officials feared still more bodies would be discovered across several states.

Damage estimates across the storm’s rampage range between $95 billion and $110 billion, potentially making this one of the most expensive storms in modern U.S. history, said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist of AccuWeather, a commercial forecasting company.

Downgraded late on Friday to a post-tropical cyclone, the remnants of Helene continued to produce heavy rains across several states, sparking massive flooding that threatened to cause dam failures that could inundate entire towns.

“The devastation we’re witnessing in Hurricane Helene’s wake has been overwhelming,” President Joe Biden said on Saturday. “Jill and I continue to pray for all of those who have lost loved ones and for everyone impacted by this storm.”

Biden was briefed about the loss of life and storm’s impact on multiple states by Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Liz Sherwood-Randall, the White House’s homeland security adviser, the White House said.

The president directed them to continue to focus on speeding up support to storm survivors and accelerating recovery efforts, including the immediate deployment of additional search and rescue teams into North Carolina, it added.

At least 3 million customers remained without power on Saturday afternoon across five states, with authorities warning it could be several days before services were fully restored. The worst outages were in South Carolina with more than 1 million homes and businesses without power, and Georgia where 750,000 were without power.

Some of the worst rains hit western North Carolina, which saw almost 30 inches (76 cm) fall on Mount Mitchell in Yancey County, the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center reported.

Atlanta was hit with 13 inches of rain, and farmers in South Georgia were assessing the damage to the state’s $1 billion cotton crop and $400 million pecan crop now in harvest season.

Before moving north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday night, packing 140 mph (225 kph) winds. It left behind a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbors, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.

Police and firefighters carried out thousands of water rescues throughout the affected states on Friday.

More than 50 people were rescued from the roof of a hospital in Unicoi County, Tennessee, about 120 miles (193 km) northeast of Knoxville, state officials said, after flood waters swamped the rural community.

‘CHIMNEY ROCK IS GONE’

The NWS issued flash flood warnings overnight for a swath of eastern Tennessee covering 100,000 residents, warning them to seek higher ground. The Nolichucky Dam in Tennessee’s Greene County was on the brink of failure on Saturday, officials reported, adding that a breach could occur at any time.

In western North Carolina, Rutherford County emergency officials warned residents near the Lake Lure Dam that it might fail, although they said late on Friday that did not appear imminent.

Multiple people in and around Chimney Rock, North Carolina, described the village’s downtown as washed out, with images online showing inches of mud and sediment, uprooted trees and snapped telephone poles and buildings turned into debris.

“All right folks, listen up, Chimney Rock is gone, Flowering Bridge is gone,” somebody known as Touristpov posted on TikTok, showing videos of the destruction. “I don’t know what they’ll do to get us out of here.”

In nearby Buncombe County, landslides forced Interstate Highways 40 and 26 to close and parts of them were washed out, the county said on X.

Mountain communities such as Boone and Burnsville, North Carolina, were cut off as highways were clogged with debris or washed out, said Rebecca Newton, who was scrambling to find anyone with cell service in the area who could check on her family home near Mount Mitchell.

“Towns are totally cut off,” she said after spending her morning making dozens of calls to friends in the area. “They’re using helicopters to get people out of Boone and Asheville.”

“Spruce Pine is gone, nothing but rooftops poking out of water,” she said of the mountain community about 50 miles northeast of Asheville.

Newton said a friend told her she had watched houses in her neighborhood slide one at a time into a river near Boone.

“It’s unreal,” she said.

The Burnsville Hub Facebook (NASDAQ:META) page is replete with people desperate to find anyone to check on relatives and friends cut off from telephone service.

One poster, Rachel Richmond, wrote, “I need any route that will get me as close as I can. I will walk the rest of the way. I need to get to my parents.”

WAKING TO DISASTER

The extent of the damage in Florida began emerging after daybreak on Friday.

In coastal Steinhatchee, a storm surge – a wall of seawater pushed ashore by winds – of eight to 10 feet (2.4-3 meters) moved mobile homes, the weather service said. In Treasure Island, a barrier island community in Pinellas County, boats were grounded in front yards.

The city of Tampa posted on X that emergency personnel had completed 78 water rescues of residents and that many roads were impassable because of flooding. The Pasco County sheriff’s office rescued more than 65 people.

A total of 11 people died in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis said on Saturday, speaking in Perry, Florida, which saw 15-foot storm surges, larger than those seen in hurricanes in recent years.

“If you look around here, you can see that some homes are just rubble,” he said. “This stuff comes in, it’s fierce and it’s just unstoppable.”

FEMA’s Criswell joined DeSantis on a tour of storm-damaged areas of the state. She will travel to Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday, the White House said.

“I just want to say on behalf of the president that we extend our deepest sympathies for those families that have lost loved ones,” Criswell said.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s office reported 15 storm-related fatalities in that state, while North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said there had been two deaths there.

At least 19 people died during the storm across South Carolina, the Charleston-based Post and Courier newspaper reported, citing local officials.

(Reporting and writing by Rich McKay; additional reporting by Joseph Ax, Andrew Hay, Brad Brooks, Ismail Shakil and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Bill Berkrot, Daniel Wallis and Paul Simao)