Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across Florida’s Big Bend region and beyond, causing widespread flooding and wind damage after making landfall Thursday night. The storm’s impact extended from the Gulf Coast of Florida to Georgia and the Appalachian Mountains, resulting in the loss of more than 40 lives across four states.
The Tampa Bay area experienced severe flooding, with entire neighbourhoods submerged due to a powerful storm surge.
In southern Georgia, rescue teams worked to extract residents, some injured, from damaged structures. Flood warnings were issued for over 2 million people in North Carolina, while millions more, including those as far north as Virginia, faced power outages.
The devastation spanned a distance of at least 800 miles from the storm’s landfall point in the sparsely populated Big Bend area of Florida, located where the panhandle meets the Florida Peninsula. Near Newport, Tennessee, a dam failure prompted a flash flood warning for 20,000 residents and forced the evacuation of a 7,000-person community. In the mountains of western North Carolina, landslides endangered homes and obstructed major roadways. Authorities issued an evacuation warning for residents downstream of the Lake Lure Dam, fearing its imminent failure.
Ryan Cole, assistant director for emergency services in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville, described the storm as “the most significant natural disaster that any of us have ever seen in western North Carolina.”
Among the storm’s fatalities were at least 17 people in South Carolina, 15 in Georgia, and seven in Florida. The hurricane made landfall just before midnight on Thursday as a Category 4 storm with winds of at least 130 mph. In Tampa, a falling sign claimed one life on a highway, according to governor Ron DeSantis, while several others drowned in other parts of the state.
The storm also spawned deadly tornadoes, with two people losing their lives in a tornado in Wheeler County, Georgia, as reported by local emergency management officials.
The vast extent of the area severely impacted by Helene is difficult to comprehend. In Atlanta, a television meteorologist covering the hurricane even rescued a woman live on the air as she cried out for help from inside her car, which was being engulfed by rising floodwaters.