Helene rescue efforts underway as death toll climbs across Southeast

BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. – Rescue and recovery crews searched for victims of the devastating storm Helene for a fifth day on Tuesday, trying to reopen roads into the mountain towns of the southern Appalachians isolated by historic flash flooding.

The confirmed death toll across the South climbed Tuesday to at least 137, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes to hit the United States this century.

Hundreds of people are still reported missing, though cell service is poor and many could be without a way to communicate. By Tuesday night, more than 1.4 million electric customers remained without power in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, according to poweroutage.us.

In vast areas of the Southeast, roads remain inaccessible and communication systems battered. Despite a surge of relief supplies from state and federal agencies, many residents remain desperate for water, food, medicine and medical care. With trees blocking roads, bridges out, gasoline scarce and information spotty, the rescue and recovery process has been painfully slow in places.

“We’re just really suffering and just hampered and hurting by the lack of communication,” said Larry Greene, a senior hospice chaplain for Hospice and Home Care of the Blue Ridge. “We have very sick, dying patients who need help, from young children to people with cancer in their 40s. But a majority are elderly patients. We are just looking at these totally nonexistent roads.”

At a Buncombe County afternoon briefing Thursday, Scott Dean of the National Urban Search and Rescue Team described the scene as “miles and miles of complete devastation” and urged residents to help each other.

“This is a time when neighbors need to help their neighbors,” Dean said. “We cannot do this alone. Don’t rely just on first responders to help you.”

The worst flash floods occurred in western North Carolina, where rain measuring in feet fell on steep mountain slopes that funneled the water into communities and homes along rivers and creeks. The water rose so quickly that many residents were caught off guard.

Horrifying stories of people swept away by floodwaters have been steadily emerging as survivors finally make contact with friends and family members.

“My mom, sister and brother-in-law had to just jump into the rushing water, and they had to watch all their animals die,” said Amber Leverette Anderson, 41, of Banner Elk, North Carolina. Among the deceased was the family dog, Storm, so named because she was so helpful in smaller floods, and her new litter of puppies.

“But we are also lucky because people are finding their family members’ bodies. We are blessed to be alive,” Anderson said. The family home in Spruce Pine is “totally gone,” she said. “Just crushed. It’s been our family house since the 1920s.”

She said a close friend found a note at the house, written by her mother, saying they were safe at a motel. “They have no shoes. They are still in the clothes they swam in. The motel has no running water for showers.”

The sheriff’s office in Macon County, North Carolina, posted on Facebook “one of the most difficult releases we have ever had to make.” An emergency call Friday reported a truck in the river, with a driver inside it.

Officials soon realized the truck matched the description of one of their own, and the victim was Jim Lau, a beloved courthouse security officer. The statement asked for prayers for Lau’s family and loved ones. “Continue to pray for Western North Carolina as a whole; the tragedy that surrounds our mountain communities is unimaginable.”

Officials at all levels said the death toll remained fluid, with few willing to guess at where the total would stop. State officials in North Carolina, for example, said early Tuesday that 38 people had died in the storm. But in Buncombe County alone, officials put the tally at 50 and then bumped it again later in the day to 57.

South Carolina’s toll ticked upward to 36, and 25 were confirmed dead in Georgia, 11 in Florida, six in Tennessee and two in Virginia.

Lillian Govus, Buncombe County’s director of communications, said search-and-rescue crews are combing through isolated areas and knocking on doors. On Tuesday, the county sent a text blast out to every person still unaccounted for. “The unaccounted number is really hard for us to share with any confidence because it changes so fluidly,” she said.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said Tuesday that 92 teams are conducting search-and-rescue operations in the mountains.

“Communities were wiped off the map,” Cooper said.

The National Guard has rescued about 500 people, said North Carolina Adjutant General Todd Hunt, and delivered 200,000 pounds of food and supplies to the Asheville airport Monday. CH-47 Chinook helicopters are flying into places inaccessible by road.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D) said his office has received 70 complaints of businesses trying to gouge vulnerable people with high prices for fuel, groceries and hotel rooms.

As the scale of the damage and the death toll became clear, former President Donald Trump flew to the southern Georgia city of Valdosta on Monday and, attempting to leverage the catastrophe, criticized the Biden administration’s response. Georgia and North Carolina are among the handful of battleground states whose outcomes will determine the presidential election.

Trump falsely claimed that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) had not been able to speak to President Joe Biden. Kemp said that was not true.

“(The president) just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ And I told him, you know, we got what we need,” Kemp said days ago. “We’ll work through the federal process. He offered and if there’s other things you need, just to call him back directly, which, I appreciate that.”

Biden said Monday of Trump, “He’s lying, and the governor told him he was lying.”

Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris announced plans to visit the storm zone. Biden plans to visit the Carolinas on Wednesday, including an aerial tour of the flooded areas and meetings with first responders and state and local officials. Harris planned a visit to Georgia, and her office said she had talked with several governors and mayors in affected areas.

Biden and Harris have emphasized that thousands of federal workers are assisting in rescue and recovery efforts. Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said Tuesday morning that she and the federal government will remain in western North Carolina until the crisis is over.

At a White House briefing, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas outlined the federal response, which officials said included 1,200 search-and-rescue personnel, another 2,000 federal workers performing other duties and 1,300 FEMA workers.

Mayorkas said that the Helene recovery effort would be a “multibillion-dollar undertaking” and that rebuilding will be “extraordinarily costly.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said FEMA had shipped 7.1 million meals and more than 7.5 million liters of water, as well as other supplies. The Defense Department has moved in 30 high-water trucks and 22 helicopters, she said, and Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder said about 6,500 personnel are involved in Helene relief efforts.

The most brutal effects of Helene came not from wind or storm surge but from rain hundreds of miles inland, in the high country. The storm made landfall Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane in Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region southeast of Tallahassee.

It then raced north with unusual speed, and by Friday morning emergency bulletins went out to cellphones in western North Carolina warning of life-threatening flash flooding. Rain fell in an area saturated from another tropical system centered off the Atlantic seaboard in recent days.

Some communities received close to 30 inches of rain over just a few days, sending river levels to record flood stages.

There are recent precedents for such storms – but not for so great a loss of life. Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 caused severe flash floods in Vermont and Upstate New York. And in 2018, Hurricane Florence’s slow progress across the Carolinas led to historic long-duration flooding.

The effects of the hurricane have been felt over a huge region. At least 425 roads were closed because of damage in at least 700 places in North Carolina, according to Joey Hopkins, the state’s transportation secretary. Officials have prioritized highways such as Interstate 40, which partially reopened near Asheville on Tuesday, and roads that serve hospitals and emergency services. As those start to open, work will shift to smaller streets where many residents remain trapped behind debris.

“They weren’t getting any linemen or arborists into those areas until the roads were rebuilt, so we couldn’t even really assess the damage,” said Lucas Beane, chief operations officer for Lucas Tree Experts, which has about 100 employees working to clear fallen trees in the Carolinas.

One of the precious commodities right now is gasoline. On Tuesday in Watkinsville, Ga., retired military officer Dwight Townsend was filling up five five-gallon gas tanks at a gas station to take back to his home nearly 100 miles away in Evans, Ga.

“The destruction is unbelievable,” he said. “The area looks like a war zone.”

In Black Mountain, a city of 8,000 east of Asheville, partial electrical power returned Tuesday, allowing the town’s gas stations to operate again. But it will be a long time before life will be able to return to normal. Water still wasn’t running. Even when it starts flowing, boil water advisories will be in place for weeks as pipes get patched and state labs test the water quality, said the town’s public works manager, Jamey Matthews.

On Tuesday remaining residents gathered at 3 p.m. in a small park for what has become a daily ritual, a town meeting. With cell service largely confined to one neighbor’s Starlink satellite dish, information is hard to come by, and the meeting is the main way to get vital news for people here. Helicopters crisscrossed overhead, interrupting the speakers.

A steady stream of work trucks, pickups loaded with bottled water and sedans covered up to their door handles in crusted mud drove by.

“Today is a good news day,” said Lisa Jennings, a forest service manager who lives in the area.

Hot meals were being served at a local grocery store. And the power was back on, at least partially.

“When we just saw partial power, who didn’t go crazy?” Steven R. Parker, Black Mountain’s police chief, said at the meeting. “Cause I know I did.”