PERRY, Fla. — Massive rains from the powerful storm Helene left people stranded, without shelter and awaiting rescue Saturday — as the cleanup began from the tempest that killed at least 52 people, caused widespread destruction across the Southeast and left millions without power.
Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140 mph and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and churning up tornadoes.
“It looks like a bomb went off,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said after surveying the damage from the air.
Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads.
There have been hundreds of water rescues across the South, including into Saturday in Buncombe County, N.C., where part of Asheville is under water.
“To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement,” said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff.
Although there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said Saturday that he wasn’t ready to report specifics, partially because communication outages hindered efforts to contact next of kin. Multiple cell towers are down in the area.
Among the desperate family members waiting for news was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her Friday morning she was going to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began hitting Asheville. Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, said she hasn’t been able to reach her since then. “She said it sounded really scary outside.”
Emergency crews are racing to rescue people trapped in flooded homes after the massive storm hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane.
She has been texting and calling since. “No response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail,” she said.
“I think that people are just completely stuck, wherever they are, with no cell service, no electricity.”
The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. It’s creating flooding that hasn’t been this bad in a century in North Carolina. And in Atlanta, where only car roofs peeked above floodwaters in some neighborhoods, more than 11 inches of rain fell over 48 hours — the most the city has seen over two days since record keeping began in 1878.
Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours. Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-high ocean temperatures.
President Biden on Saturday called the devastation caused by Helene “overwhelming” and said his administration was committed to helping the huge swath of the Southeast affected by the storm to recover.
Deaths have been reported in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. Among the people killed were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree.
None of the victims reported in Florida were from Taylor County, where the storm made landfall in the state’s Big Bend area, officials said.
“If you had told me there was going to be 15 feet to 18 feet of storm surge, even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had multiple fatalities,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Saturday.
The county went years without taking a direct hit from a hurricane. But after three storms in a little over a year, the area is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway.
“It’s wiped out a lot. It’s bringing everybody to reality about what this is now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway.
Just to the north, Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix, Lucy, could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.
At least, until her house was carried away by Helene.
Debby, Oscar, Tony: What’s in a storm’s name? How does a tropical storm or hurricane get its moniker? Will yours come up on the forecasters’ list?
“It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said Friday as she wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited it.
Farther south, in the wealthy enclave of Davis Islands in Tampa, where star athletes like Derek Jeter and Tom Brady have lived, residents were continuing to clean up Saturday from storm surge left by Helene.
The neighborhoods that sit just off Tampa’s downtown and are home to about 5,000 people had never seen storm surge like it had Friday. No one died, but homes, businesses and apartments were flooded.
And power is out for nearly everyone in Perry, Fla., where cars started lining up before the sun rose on Saturday at a free food distribution site. Sierra Land said although her home seems to have dodged any major damage, with no electricity, she lost everything in her fridge.
“We’re making it one day at a time,” Land said as she arrived at the Convoy of Hope distribution site with her 5- and 10-year-old sons and her grandmother.
Thousands of utility crew workers descended upon Florida in advance of the hurricane, and by Saturday had restored power to more than 1.9 million homes and businesses. But hundreds of thousands remain without power there and in Georgia, where utilities urged patience.
Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency Director Chris Stallings said crews are focused on opening routes to hospitals and making sure supplies can be delivered to damaged communities.
“Unfortunately, treacherous conditions remain across the state with crews navigating extensive tree damage, persisting flooding conditions and many road closures,” Georgia Power, the state’s only private electric utility, said in a news release.
Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage from the storm. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the U.S. is between $95 billion and $110 billion.
Smith, Payne and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press. Payne reported from Tallahassee, Fla., and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Mo. AP journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Ga.; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Ore., contributed.
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