Fatalities at least 25 in Georgia; thousands still without power

(The Center Square) - Twenty-five people have died and thousands remain without power as Georgia continues to recover from Hurricane Helene, Gov. Brian Kemp said Monday morning at a news conference in Augusta.

The storm was projected to travel up I-75 in Georgia but instead shifted, causing significant damage in Lowndes County on the Florida-Georgia line and in counties near the South Carolina border.

State officials continue to assess damage and get supplies to those in the path of the storm that made landfall in Florida and weaved its way through eastern Georgia into eastern Tennessee and the Carolinas.

"It looks like a 250-mile wide tornado has hit," Kemp said. "The thing that's unusual about the storm, it's unprecedented for a cat 2 hurricane to actually make landfall in Georgia and to see the level of destruction that a hurricane can do in this community, being this far from Lowndes County or Echols County and the Florida line."

Kemp requested an expedited emergency disaster declaration from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.

More than 1.3 million customers were without power at one point, the governor said.

Electric membership cooperatives, he said, have restored 208,645 customers.

"They had 435,000 out at peak," Kemp said. "Obviously, our EMCs are dealing with rural areas. It's a lot harder to get to, it takes a lot more time and normally there's a lot more trees blocking long stretches of roads that they need to go down."

Georgia Power had 820,000 customers without power at peak and has 370,000 out, the governor said.

Kemp declared a state of emergency before the storm hit. He deployed 1,500 National Guard members to help with the recovery.

Five-hundred and 20 people are in shelters throughout the state, said Georgia Emergency Management Agency Director Chris Stallings.

Communications are hampered by cellphone outages caused by the storm, Stallings said.

"We have 328 Verizon sites that are still out of service and 258 AT&T sites that still out of service," he said. "T-Mobile as well has 100 sites that are on generator power only and they have 5% of their total coverage area that's out."

It could take up to 72 hours for some of the resources to get to storm victims, Stallings said.