NATURAL DISASTER: At least 3.5 million customers remained without power across five states in the US and authorities said restoring it could take a few days

Reuters, ATLANTA, Georgia

Authorities across a wide swath of the southeastern US yesterday faced the daunting task of cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, one of the most powerful to hit the country, as the death toll continued to rise.

At least 43 deaths were reported by late on Friday, and officials feared still more bodies would be discovered across several states.

Helene, downgraded late on Friday to a post-tropical cyclone, continued to produce heavy rains across several states, sparking life-threatening flooding that threatened to create dam failures that could inundate entire towns.

A local resident helps free a car that became stranded on a stretch of flooding road amid Hurricane Helene, on the outskirts of Boone, North Carolina, on Friday.

Photo: Reuters

In Pinellas County, Florida, near Tampa, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he had never seen destruction like that which Helene wrought.

“I would just describe it, having spent the last few hours out there, as a war zone,” Gualtieri told a news conference.

At least 3.5 million customers remained without power across five states, with authorities warning it could be several days before services were fully restored.

Scientists say climate change contributes to fueling stronger, more destructive hurricanes.

Before moving north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday night, packing 225kph winds. It left behind a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbors, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.

Police and firefighters carried out thousands of water rescues throughout the affected states on Friday.

More than 50 people were rescued from the roof of a hospital in Unicoi County, Tennessee, about 200km northeast of Knoxville, state officials said.

Rising waters from the Nolichucky River prevented ambulances and emergency vehicles from evacuating patients and others there, the Unicoi County Emergency Management Agency said on social media.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, Cocke County Mayor Rob Mathis ordered the evacuation of downtown Newport because of a potential failure at the nearby Walters dam.

In western North Carolina, Rutherford County emergency officials warned residents near the Lake Lure Dam that it might fail, although they said late on Friday that failure did not appear imminent.

In nearby Buncombe County, landslides forced interstates 40 and 26 to close, the county said on X.

The extent of the damage in Florida began emerging after daybreak on Friday.

In coastal Steinhatchee, a storm surge — a wall of seawater pushed ashore by winds — of 2.4m to 3m moved mobile homes, the US National Weather Service said on X.

In Treasure Island, a barrier island community in Pinellas County, boats were grounded in front yards.

The city of Tampa posted on X that emergency personnel had completed 78 water rescues of residents and that many roads were impassable because of flooding. The Pasco County sheriff’s office rescued more than 65 people.

Officials had pleaded with residents in Helene’s path to heed evacuation orders, with US National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan describing the storm surge as “unsurvivable.”

Gualtieri said the conditions prevented first responders from answering several emergency calls.

On Friday, county authorities found at least five people dead.

Two others in Florida died, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s office reported 15 storm-related fatalities in that state, while North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said there had been two deaths there.

At least 19 people died during the storm across South Carolina, the Charleston-based Post and Courier newspaper reported, citing local officials.