North Carolina recovering from storm

ASHEVILLE, NC − At least 2.5 million people remained without power Sunday across the Southeast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, thousands in North Carolina where the storm pulverized homes, trapped residents, spawned landslides and submerged communities under raging floodwaters.

Dozens of people have died across multiple states since the record-breaking storm hit Florida’s Big Bend as a Category 4 hurricane with 140-mph winds Thursday before moving north through Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas and weakening to a post-tropical cyclone.

On Sunday, North Carolina officials were still trying to grasp the level of devastation. Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference that at least 11 people died in the devastated state and officials know “there will be more.”

Buncombe County Manager Avril Pinder said more than 1,000 people were reported missing through the county’s online portal, but she said she expected that number to drop dramatically when cell service is restored. Rescue crews are “still trying to save every single person we can” in the hard-hit community, Pinder said.

Hundreds of roads were washed away, cellular service for over 250,000 people was cut off, and vast swaths of cities such as Asheville were left underwater. Cooper said Helene had become “one of the worst storms in modern history for parts of North Carolina.”

Officials said earlier that more than 200 people had been rescued in the state by water and helicopter crews.

Ryan Cole, the assistant director of Buncombe County Emergency Services, said the wreckage was overwhelming. “We have biblical devastation across the county. We’ve had biblical flooding here,” Cole said.

More than 400 roads remained closed in North Carolina, including “all roads in Western NC,” the North Carolina Department of Transportation said in a post on X. “Travel in western North Carolina remains limited and dangerous,” Cooper said, urging people in the area to stay off the roads.

DRONE VIDEO: Helene’s rains leave Asheville, NC underwater

Drone footage shows Asheville’s River Arts district underwater after Helene’s historic rainfall.

On Sunday, officials in western North Carolina continued to search for flood victims.

Asheville Police Chief Michael Lamb said his department had a list of about 60 people with relatives they had not been able to reach. His department planned “welfare checks” at homes to check those individuals.

Helene wiped out large parts of Asheville, including businesses in the beloved River Arts District.

Overlooking the district, the Riverlink Bridge, a central gateway between downtown and West Asheville, has become a sort of hub for gathering as residents reel from the historic damage caused by Helene. On Saturday the French Broad River was still well above its banks at over 17 feet, according to NOAA.

Erin Quevedo, the owner of Balm Salon on Depot Street, was ankle deep in mud attempting to save what she could of her business.

“The living room was completely destroyed. It looks like the water came up to about five feet inside,” Quevedo said. Five hair stylists worked at the salon along with her.

“Right now, all we’re doing is we’re trying to salvage what we can,” she said, noting that only a few things, such as hairstyle tools, were salvageable. “It’s really heartbreaking. I’m not really sure what we’re going to do. I think it’s just kind of one step at a time.”

A scramble for survival: No time for shoes as Asheville family flees by boat, fearing they lost everything

ERWIN, Tenn. − In parts of Appalachian eastern Tennessee near the North Carolina border, the damage from Helene’s deluge was evident Sunday in washed-out bridges, closed roads, destroyed buildings and lack of power for some residents.

Unicoi County officials said Sunday that restoring power to the county could take weeks. Some residents said they had relatives who were still missing.

At a church shelter in Greeneville run by the Red Cross, volunteers made pancakes early Sunday for a handful of people still sleeping on cots after being forced from their homes. In Erwin, a town of about 6,000, those impacted by the storm streamed into a local high school serving as a shelter to get hot food, bottled water and clothing. Many were trying to figure out what to do next.

−Chris Kenning

Over 2 feet of rain had fallen across North Carolina’s mountainous region in recent days thanks to a rare confluence of weather patterns over the eastern US before Helene arrived in Florida on Thursday night.

Tiny Busick in Yancey County along the western border with Tennessee, recorded 29.58 inches in just 48 hours. In Asheville, record high levels were set on the French Broad River and the Swannanoa River near the Biltmore estate. The historic Biltmore Village nearby was nearly submerged after Helene tore through the area, according to aerial footage.

At least 5,000 emergency calls to 911 were fielded since Thursday. And with more than 200 North Carolinians requiring rescue from following Helene’s torrential rains, local, state and federal officials mobilized to help. Read more here.

− Josh Meyer and Dinah Voyles Pulver

Thousands of members of the National Guard have been mobilized to join search and rescue missions and clear debris after Hurricane Helene battered the Southeast.

The bulk of National Guard members were deployed in Florida, where 3,900 members of the state’s National Guard were stationed across 21 counties to offer humanitarian relief and security as well as cleaning up debris and rescuing residents from rising floodwaters.

Hundreds more were activated in Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Virginia and Tennessee, where Guardsmen rescued 50 patients and staff from a hospital in Unicoi County who were trapped because of extreme flooding.

Hurricane Helene made landfall around 11:10 pm Thursday just east of the Aucilla River’s mouth, roughly 40 minutes south of Madison County, Florida.

Winds ripped the roof off Kenneth Butler’s home, which had just been fixed after Hurricane Idalia damaged it last year. During Helene on Thursday, “it sounded like someone was grabbing tin and just throwing it everywhere,” he said.

Water drained the home as the storm raged on. All he and his family could hear was the sound of a train whistle.

Doreen Gross, and her five grandchildren that live with her, did not take any chances. Gross said her boss had a fully furnished, unoccupied house he was planning to sell and let them stay in it for the storm.

But the home’s sturdy walls didn’t shield them from the wails of the winds. “The whole house was rattling, (the kids) were all scared,” Gross said. “We were all bundled together.”

It was the scariest thing she had ever seen, Gross said − and she survived category 5 Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Looking outside Thursday night was like watching a scene from the “Wizard of Oz,” she said.

− Elena Barrera, the Tallahassee Democrat

President Joe Biden signed a major disaster declaration for North Carolina and ordered federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts. Biden also approved emergency disaster relief aid for Tennessee as local officials warned the Nolichucky Dam in Greene County was on the brink of failure and announced about 100,000 residents to seek higher ground. Hours later, the National Weather Service ended its “flash flood emergency,” but a flood warning was still in effect.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell will travel to Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday, the White House said, as part of the administration’s effort to speed support to survivors and deploy more search and rescue teams to “accelerate recovery efforts” in North Carolina.

More than 60 people have died across several states, according to authorities and media reports.

The worst power outages from Helene were in South Carolina, where nearly 1 million homes and businesses were in the dark, according to PowerOutage.us. In Georgia, 680,000 were without power; nearly 470,000 were without power in North Carolina. Authorities have warned it take days for services to be fully restored.

Forecasters began warning last Tuesday that a confluence of weather patterns was coming together that would likely soak the region. A front overhead was going to interact with a plume of moisture being pulled in ahead of Helene.

The rain “started well ahead of the storm, training up from the Gulf into our area, and circulation around the storm pushed moisture up from the extremely warm Gulf waters,” said David Easterling, a rain expert with NOAA’s National Climate Assessment Technical Support Unit .

Interactions like this, with a band of moisture ahead of a tropical storm or hurricane, are called predecessor events and they’ve been documented in the past to cause heavy rains ahead of the arrival of tropical storms and hurricanes. Jet stream winds blowing aloft at more than 115 mph provided lift that further enhanced moisture in the developing storms.

Along the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina on Wednesday and Thursday, almost 10 inches of rain fell in Asheville and 8 inches in Tryon, according to preliminary weather service data. Another 6 fell over the two days in Bristol-Johnson, Tennessee and more than 4 inches in Knoxville.

−Dinah Voyles-Pulver

All eyes were continuing to keep watch on the Atlantic as hurricane season enters its last two months.

Tropical Storm Joyce, which formed in the central Atlantic Ocean on Friday, was about 975 miles east of the Leeward Islands on Sunday and was expected to become a depression on Monday. There was no threat to land.

Hurricane Isaac was about 575 miles northwest of the Azores moving over the open Atlantic, hurricane officials said. There was also no current threat to land.

But an 8 am Sunday Tropical Weather Outlook from the National Hurricane center noted that another system has a 50% chance of development in the Caribbean and the Gulf between Tuesday and next weekend.

Contributing: Michael Loria and Jeanine Santucci, USA TODAY

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North Carolina recovering from storm

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