PERRY, Florida, USA (AP) - The drizzles caused by Hurricane Helene left several people stranded, without shelter, and waiting to be rescued on Saturday, as cleanup efforts began for a storm that caused at least 64 deaths, widespread destruction in the southeastern United States, and left millions of customers without electricity.
"I had never seen so many homeless people as I have now," said Janalea England, from Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town in the rural northern part of the state, as she turned her fish business into a donation site for friends and neighbors, many of whom did not have secure housing.
Helene made landfall in the northern region of Florida as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday night with winds of 225 kilometers per hour (140 miles per hour).
From that moment on, it rapidly advanced through Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp said on Saturday that it looked like a bomb had exploded after seeing destroyed houses and highways covered in debris from the sky. Already weakened, Helene lashed out at North and South Carolina, as well as Tennessee, with torrential rains, causing streams and rivers to overflow and pushing dams to their limits.
Western North Carolina was practically cut off due to landslides and floods that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads.
Hundreds of water rescues have been carried out, but none more dramatic than the one in rural Unicoi County, in eastern Tennessee, where dozens of patients and workers were airlifted from the roof of a hospital on Friday. And the rescues continued the next day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was underwater.
"Describing this as a surprise would be an understatement," commented Quentin Miller, the county's police chief.
Although there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said he was not prepared to report the details, in part because fallen mobile phone towers hindered efforts to contact relatives.
The relatives posted desperate pleas for help on Facebook. Among those waiting for news of their loved ones was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister had told her she was going to check on some guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began to hit Asheville. Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, has not been able to contact her sister since then.
"I think people are completely stranded," he commented.
It is expected that the storm, which is currently a post-tropical cyclone, will pass over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, as reported by the National Hurricane Center.
Catastrophic floods
Helene caused the worst floods in a century in North Carolina, where Governor Roy Cooper described them as "catastrophic" as search and rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government came to help. One community, Spruce Pine, was flooded with over 60 centimeters (2 feet) of rain from Tuesday to Saturday.
And in Atlanta, 28.24 centimeters (11.12 inches) of rain fell in 48 hours, a record for that period since records began in 1878.
The US President, Joe Biden, said on Saturday that the devastation caused by the passage of Helene has been "overwhelming" and promised to send aid.
Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone for South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it made landfall north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths have also been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
According to Moody's Analytics, material damages between 15,000 and 26,000 million dollars are expected. AccuWeather's preliminary estimate of the total damages and economic losses from Helene in the United States ranges from 95,000 to 110,000 million dollars.
Climate change has exacerbated the conditions that allow these types of storms to thrive, intensifying rapidly in warmer waters and becoming powerful cyclones sometimes within hours.