Hurricane Helene tore across the state and produced devastating floods, k!lling at least 30 people and leaving scores more unaccounted for in just one county in North Carolina.
Throughout Sunday, a fuller picture of the storm’s impact on Florida and Georgia emerged, with Buncombe County appearing to be the hardest damaged.
“We have biblical devastation,” said Ryan Cole, an emergency official in the county, which contains the mountain city of Asheville. “This is the most significant natural disaster that any one of us has ever seen.”
According to the BBC’s US partner CBS, at least 105 people have di3d throughout the US since the hurricane made landfall in Florida on Thursday, and the number is expected to grow as officials reach more locations.
Helene began as a hurricane, the most powerful on record to strike Florida’s Big Bend, then traveled north through Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee.
The majority of de@ths were documented in North and South Carolina, where Helene made landfall as a tropical storm. On Sunday evening, officials in North Carolina reported that 30 people had di3d in Buncombe County alone.
Crews around the state are dealing with power and mobile service outages, felled trees, and hundreds of closed highways. On Sunday, some homeowners returned to discover that their homes had been completely destroyed.
“This storm has brought catastrophic devastation… of historic proportions,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said.
The American Red Cross has opened over 140 shelters for those who have been evacuated from their homes throughout the Southeast. The shelters are currently being used by around 2,000 individuals, according to the group.
