Dozens dead, millions without power after Helen’s impact

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

Emergency Services Director Van Taylor-Jones, while acknowledging there were deaths in the county, said he was not ready to report details, in part because downed cell phone towers had disrupted efforts to contact next of kin.

Relatives posted desperate pleas for help on Facebook. Among those waiting for news was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her she wanted to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began to pound Asheville. Kavanagh, who lives in Atlanta, could not be reached.

“I think people are completely stuck,” he said.

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

“catastrophic” flood

It unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina, where Gov. Roy Cooper described it as “catastrophic” as search and rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government rushed to help. A community called Spruce Pine was inundated with over 600mm of rain in five days.

And in Atlanta, more than 8 inches (280 mm) fell in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in two days since records began in 1878.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that the devastation of Helen was “enormous” and pledged to send aid. He also approved a disaster declaration for North Carolina and made federal funding available for those affected.

Helen killed at least 25 people in South Carolina, the deadliest tropical storm to hit the state since Hurricane Hugo hit the coast north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths were also reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Loading

Moody’s Analytics said it expects financial losses of $15 billion to $26 billion. AccuWeather’s initial estimate of total economic damage from Helen in the United States is $95 billion ($137.5 billion) to $110 billion.

Climate change has exacerbated the conditions that allow such storms to grow and rapidly intensify in warming waters, sometimes becoming powerful hurricanes within hours.

Drainage and over dams

Evacuations began before the storm hit and continued as lakes overflowed dams, including one in North Carolina that forms a lake. dirty dance. A helicopter was used to rescue some people from flooded homes.

And in Newport, Tennessee, Jonah Wark waited so long to evacuate by car that a boat came to his rescue. “It’s definitely a scary moment,” Wark said.

“Who would have thought a tornado would cause so much damage in East Tennessee?” said a stunned Congresswoman Diana Harshberger after a helicopter tour.

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

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

“If you had told me there was a storm coming [of four to five metres]Even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had several deaths, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday.

Loading

Taylor County in the Big Bend went years without being directly hit by a hurricane. But after Idalia and two other storms in a little more than a year, the region began to feel like a hurricane highway.

“It brings everyone back to reality about what’s happening now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinheche, a small fishing and weekend vacation town.

Timmy Fuchs, of Horseshoe Beach, stayed out of the storm before the water reached his home and headed for higher ground. Many of the houses in the town that his grandfather had helped found were turned into piles of wood.

“We’ve seen our city fragmented,” Fuchs said.

Consequences

About 100 kilometers to the north, cars lined up before dawn Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, Florida, amid widespread power outages.

“We’re making it up,” said Sierra Land, who lost everything in her refrigerator when she arrived with her five- and 10-year-old sons and grandmother.

Thousands of utility workers descended on Florida ahead of the storm, and power was restored to more than 1.9 million homes and businesses by Saturday. But hundreds of thousands of people there and in Georgia remained without electricity.

Chris Stallings, director of Georgia’s emergency management and Homeland Security Agency, said crews are focused on opening routes to hospitals and ensuring supplies are delivered to affected communities.

Loading

Helen was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting an above-average season this year because of record warm ocean temperatures.

AP

___

Payne reported from Perry and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Seth Bornstein, Associated Press reporters in New York; Travis Lawler in Nashville, Tennessee; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Susan Hague in Hartford, Connecticut; and Frida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, assisted.