Stephen Colbert Gets Emotional While Explaining the ‘Unimaginable Destruction’ of Hurricane Helene

Stephen Colbert spent the first segment of his show on Monday discussing the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a Category 4 storm that made landfall in Florida on Thursday. At times, he became audibly emotional, and by the end, he told everyone how they can help people in the most hard-hit areas.

First, Colbert checked in with Louis Cato, band leader at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, who has family in Asheville, North Carolina. He said everyone was doing well. Colbert also said that he had connections to that area from his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina.

Before going into the details of the damage, Colbert’s voice wavered as he mentioned how “heartbreaking” the situation was in the southeast:

It was a Category 4 storm that made landfall late Thursday night in Florida and then proceeded to cut a swath of destruction 420 miles wide and 600 miles long. That makes Helene larger than all but two gulf storms since 1988. It’s unimaginable destruction. So far, there have been at least 121 confirmed deaths due to the storm, and hundreds of people missing.

This is devastating for everyone in the path of Helene, and I speak for everyone at The Late Show when I say our hearts go out to the people who have just begun to address the damage to their communities. As we speak, millions of people are without power, water, and cell phone service. Gasoline is also going away because everyone is using it for their generators. So, resources are incredibly scarce. There are disaster areas all over the south, in Florida, where record-breaking storm surges drove water at least 10 feet above ground level. And there was catastrophic damage in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and my home state of South Carolina.

But as Louis and I were saying, western North Carolina was hit particularly hard. This is Asheville, which is more than 300 miles from the coast. The city got over 17 inches of rain in three days. That’s four to five months worth of rain in three days. So many roads have been washed away that the town is completely isolated. In fact, the highway signs in the rest of the state say, “Do not travel in western North Carolina.”

The situation in that entire region is dire. As one local resident told CNN, “We all really need help here.”

Colbert then directed the audience to the Late Show site, which has numerous links for ways to help. Viewers can also use the QR code in the video above to find the site.

Watch the video above via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on YouTube.

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