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 48 deaths across five states, including 23 people in South Carolina. Officials fear the death toll could rise as authorities continue to take stock of Helene’s devastation.
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.
Follow AP’s coverage of tropical weather at https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes.
Here’s the latest:
Residents lining up for food in hard-hit Florida town
PERRY, Fla. — The cars started lining up before the sun rose on Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, near where the storm made landfall. Dozens of vehicles wound through the parking lot and out onto U.S. Highway 27, filled with families who are running out of food in a county where, as of Saturday morning, 99% of customers didn’t have power.
Sierra Land said although her home seems to have dodged any major damage, with no electricity, she’s lost everything in her refrigerator.
“We’re making it one day at a time,” Land said.
Land said she arrived at the Convoy of Hope distribution site with her two sons, ages 5 and 10, and her grandmother between 6:30 and 7 a.m., more than three hours before volunteers were expected to begin handing out food, water and hygiene kits.
“There was no reason to sit at the house. Not when we needed to be in the line,” Land said. “The kids … they needed to get out and see something besides the four walls.”
If they can sort out how to keep themselves fed, they can focus on other concerns, like Land’s grandfather Franklin Ratliff, who has dementia and COPD and hasn’t been able to use his oxygen since Helene shredded the area’s power grid.
“With his dementia, his focal point is watching TV. And there’s no TV. So it’s been a lot of having to talk with him. Keep him in good spirits because he still doesn’t understand what happened,” Land said. “He kept trying to get up and go outside during the storm.”
Western North Carolina inundated by flooding
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Western North Carolina has been essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. Video shows sections of Asheville underwater.
Francine Cavanaugh said she has been totally unable to reach her sister, son, or friends in the Asheville area.
“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”
Cavanaugh said her sister had no idea how bad the storm would be there. She told Cavanaugh she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”
She saw video of a grocery store near the cabins that was completely flooded.
“I think that people are just completely stuck, wherever they are, with no cell service, no electricity.”
Locals grateful no one was killed in Tampa neighborhood that saw unprecedented storm surge
TAMPA, Fla. — Davis Islands, the Tampa neighborhood that star athletes like baseball’s Derek Jeter and football’s Tom Brady have called home, was cleaning up Saturday after Helene’s chest-high storm surge tore through its streets the day before.
The two islands sit just off the city’s downtown and are home to about 5,000 people. The neighborhood had never seen storm surge like it had Friday. No one died, but homes, businesses and apartments were flooded.
Authorities warned residents to evacuate, and many did, but some stayed behind.
”I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” Faith Pilafas told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve kind of gotten accustomed to lots of talk about big storms, and never actually like feeling the effects of it. So for all the people who didn’t leave the island, I feel like they were all just expecting it to be a normal storm, anticlimactic. And wow, were we surprised.”
A 24-year-old restaurant worker, she and her boyfriend watched from their second-floor apartment as the water rose to over 4 feet (1.2 meters). Her boyfriend used his kayak to help people get off the island.
“I mean, just every single business is, like, totally destroyed,” she told the newspaper. “But we don’t know anybody who is seriously injured, and so we’re just really grateful that didn’t happen.”
Debra Ogston returned to her Italian restaurant to find that its heavy coolers had been overturned. She said the job now will be to clean up and reopen.
“We’re resilient,” she told the newspaper. “We’re going to go for progress, not perfection. … The damage here is annoying, and a little heartbreaking. But it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced.”
Vice President Harris urges residents affected by Helene to heed local officials
DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday urged residents impacted by Hurricane Helene to pay heed to local authorities as the storm continues to wreak havoc on a significant swath of the southeast.
“The storm continues to be dangerous and deadly, and lives have been lost and the risk of flooding still remains high,” Harris said at the start of a campaign speech in Douglas, Arizona. “So, I continue to urge everyone to please continue to follow guidance from your local officials until we get past this moment.”
Dam near North Carolina-Tennessee border not experiencing ‘catastrophic failure,’ officials say
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Emergency Management Agency said Friday that a “catastrophic failure” was not taking place at Walters Dam, also known as the Waterville Dam, which sits in North Carolina close to the Tennessee border.
A local mayor had urged residents to evacuate due to the dam potentially breaking, but TEMA said in a statement that the “dam has not failed” after talking to Duke Energy, which owns the nearly 100-year-old dam.
Dozens rescued by helicopter from a flooded Tennessee hospital
NASHVILLE — There have been hundreds of water rescues due to Helene, but perhaps none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.
Some 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital while water rapidly flooded the facility, according to Ballad Health.
Ballad Health said on social media that county officials had ordered an evacuation of the hospital Friday morning due to rising water in the Nolichucky River, including 11 patients.
After other helicopters failed to reach the hospital because of the storm’s winds, a Virginia State Police helicopter was able to land on the roof. Three National Guard helicopters with hoist capabilities were sent and Ballad Health assisted with its own helicopter, officials said. After about four hours, all of the staff and patients had been rescued.
▶ Read more about Friday’s dramatic rescue
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