At least 64 dead, millions without power after Helene’s deadly march across Southeast

Hurricane Helene devastates U.S. Southeast, leaving millions without power, causing widespread destruction, and killing at least 64 people.

Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, without shelter and awaiting rescue Saturday (September 28, 2024), as the cleanup began from a tempest that killed at least 64 people, caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Southeast and left millions without power.

“I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now,” said Janalea England, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town along the state’s rural Big Bend, as she turned her commercial fish market into a storm donation site for friends and neighbors, many of whom couldn’t get insurance on their homes.

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 225 kmph.

From there, it quickly moved through Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp said Saturday (September 28, 2024) that it “looks like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air. Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was isolated because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. All those closures delayed the start of the East Tennessee State University football game against The Citadel because the Buccaneers' drive to Charleston, South Carolina, took 16 hours.

There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop Friday (September 27, 2024). And the rescues continued into the following day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was under water.

“To say this caught us off guard would be an understatement,” said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff.