The remnants of Hurricane Helene dissipated Saturday but millions remain without power across the Southeast and officials warned that record-breaking river flooding is ongoing in parts of southern Appalachia.
The storm has been blamed for at least 64 deaths across five states, including 23 people in South Carolina and 11 in Florida. But the death toll is sure to rise as authorities continue to take stock of Helene's devastation. In hard-hit Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Asheville is located, authorities said they know people died but aren't announcing anything because communication outages haven't allowed them to reach relatives of the victims.
The hurricane roared ashore Thursday night as a Category 4 storm on Florida's Gulf Coast and then quickly moved Friday through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.
Tropical Storm John made its second landfall along Mexico's Pacific coast Friday, while in its wake authorities in the resort city of Acapulco called for help from anyone with a boat to deal with the flooding. It has since dissipated over Mexico.
President Joe Biden was briefed on Saturday evening by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall on the devastating impact Hurricane Helene wrought on the southeast, according to the White House.
The briefing came after Criswell on Saturday visited the hard-hit Big Bend community in Florida. She is set to visit Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday to get a first-hand look at the damage.
Biden, according to the White House, directed Criswell and Sherwood-Randall to focus on how the administration "can speed support" to communities, including the immediate deployment of additional search and rescue teams into North Carolina.
The US President said in a statement Saturday he was "deeply saddened" by the loss of life and devastation from Helene and that he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the families. Biden was being regularly briefed by his team on the storm, and the leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in the region assessing the damage, along with local officials.
"The road to recovery will be long, but know that my Administration will be with you every step of the way. We're not going to walk away. We're not going to give up," he said.
Earlier Saturday, Biden approved a federal emergency declaration for Tennessee. Biden approved emergency declarations for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina before the storm made landfall.
The declarations authorize FEMA to provide assistance for emergency measures to save lives, protect property, public health and safety, and fund other emergency response measures.
Water, gasoline and electricity remain in short supply in the largest Georgia city that was directly in the path of Hurricane Helene. Augusta-Richmond County Mayor Garnett Johnson said during a Saturday afternoon news conference that 1,000 Georgia Power linemen are working to restore electricity in the city of 200,000.
"I can't assure you we're going to have power in the next one, two or three days," Johnson said. "Some of us may get lucky and others may not." For now, a lack of electricity means few functioning gas stations in Augusta.
"Right now there are very limited resources in this community, If you don't have gasoline, there's not a lot out there," Johnson said. Gov. Brian Kemp told WJBF-TV that state officials are sending generators to convenience stores so they can turn on their pumps.
Johnson said water pressure is low citywide, and workers are having trouble reaching water main breaks. Both Johnson and officials in the neighboring areas of Columbia County, Georgia, and Aiken, South Carolina, emphatically denied rumors that utility workers would shut down entire water systems.
"So we highly encourage you just to be patient," Johnson said. "Do not use any water that you don't need." Two fire stations were handing out water donated by the Augusta Ironman triathlon after the race, scheduled for Sunday, was canceled.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and other state and federal officials toured east Tennessee by helicopter on Saturday, viewing a scene Lee called "heartbreaking." "There's a great deal of damage, a great deal of heartache, a great deal of work to be done," he said.
U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger expressed disbelief at the extent of the damage. "It's something like we've never seen in this part of the state," she said. "Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in east Tennessee?"
Authorities in western North Carolina are using helicopters to rescue people who have been stranded since Helene slammed into the region on Friday. Rutherford County officials posted on social media that they are working to airlift people from the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village area, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.
"As soon as we receive the names of those rescued, we will make every effort to reach out to families and individuals who have inquired about their loved ones," officials said.
Ten of the 11 people who died in Florida as a result of Hurricane Helene lived in the Tampa Bay area, officials said Saturday. The other victim was killed when a tree fell on a house in Dixie County, in north Florida.
Nine of the victims lived in mandatory evacuation zones in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, along Florida's Gulf Coast. Each of those victims drowned in their homes, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. They ranged in age from 37 to 89. The other victim died when a sign fell onto a car in Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Helene left a wide swath of destruction on the east side of the state. "What is looks like from the air is it looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off," Kemp told reporters in Valdosta. "And it's not just here, it looks like this from here all the way to Augusta."
"This is certainly going to be multiple days of outage," Georgia Power Co. CEO Kim Greene said.
Local News
