US south-east reels from ‘catastrophic’ devastation from Hurricane Helene

Rescue crews in parts of the south-eastern US were still searching on Friday for those missing as they entered the eighth day since Hurricane Helene roared ashore in Florida and became the deadliest mainland hurricane in the US since Katrina in 2005.

The death toll could grow higher, having surpassed 200 on Thursday, while the sheer scale of the devastation from wind and floods has slowed efforts to find many people’s loved ones and also get supplies to stranded communities and restore power to more than 700,000 people.

Officials have reported at least 215 deaths across six states as a result of Helene and warned that more will be found dead in the coming days and weeks as the recovery efforts continue amid shocking devastation to whole towns, roads and vital infrastructure, with rescue crews and volunteers becoming exhausted.

The hardest-hit state was North Carolina with about half of the reported deaths occurring there. As of Thursday, the death toll for western North Carolina rose to 108 people, according to the Asheville Citizen-Times.

In some parts of the state, such as in Buncombe county and other mountain communities, residents and communities became isolated due to impassable flooded or broken-up roads, mudslides, fallen trees and huge amounts of debris, destroyed homes and little to no cellphone service, internet connections or electricity.

Volunteers are using mules and piloting helicopters in some cases to help deliver supplies and rescue stranded victims, boosted by fundraising from far beyond the area. And, in a wide radius around the city of Asheville, into small mountain communities, thousands are believed still to be cut off, with officials unable to give a statistic on the number of people estimated to remain isolated as local, state and federal authorities strive to reach them.

A volunteer group of private pilots, the Altitude Project, raised $200,000 this week to fund operations, according to member Andrew Everhart, who owns an insurance agency.

“It’s a lot of guys that have jets and helicopters and a lot of connections, and we just decided to lock arms and create our own thing and help people out,” Everhart said.

Tens of thousands of residents in the state were without running water this week, Reuters reported, and on Tuesday, the state issued boil water advisories and said that 27 water plants were closed and not producing water.

“We know these are hard times, but please know we’re coming,” Quentin Miller, sheriff of Buncombe county, said on Thursday at a news conference. “We’re coming to get you. We’re coming to pick up our people.” The county alone has already seen 72 people declared dead and officials estimate that at least 200 are still unaccounted for, with loss of communications infrastructure greatly hampering efforts.

Jason Long, the chief of the volunteer rescue squad in Alleghany county, North Carolina, told the Guardian that he had “never seen anything like” the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene in his community, describing it as “catastrophic”.

“We’re looking at hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in damage,” he said, adding that people had lost homes, farms, livestock, cattle, equipment and businesses, as well as loved ones. “It’s gonna be tough,” he added.

The death toll from Hurricane Katrina after it hit New Orleans was estimated at 1,400 in a 2023 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

On Friday, the number of power outages in the US south-eastern region fell below a million for the first time since the storm. Still, more than 250,000 people in South Carolina had no power as of Friday morning, according to poweroutage.us, as well as over 230,000 people in North Carolina, just over 200,000 in Georgia, 13,000 in Virginia and 10,000 in Florida.

Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region last Thursday as a category 4 hurricane. It then became a tropical storm and traveled northward through Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia, causing extreme rainfall, strong winds, devastating flooding, washed-out roads and severe power and cellular service outages.

Joe Biden approved federal disaster assistance for survivors in designated counties in Florida, Georgia North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, and more than 4,800 personnel from across the federal workforce are deployed to the affected areas across the country along with 6,000 national guard personnel from 12 states, according to the White House.

In addition, the US president announced on Wednesday that he would deploy up to 1,000 active-duty soldiers to North Carolina to reinforce the state’s national guard.

Biden visited Georgia, Florida and the affected areas of of North and South Carolina this week to assess the damage there.

Kamala Harris, the vice-president and Democratic nominee for president, visited Georgia, as did Donald Trump, her Republican opponent.

Trump returns to Georgia on Friday and is set to appear with Governor Brian Kemp in Evans, despite the former president having criticized the governor repeatedly since he failed to support Trump’s efforts to overturn the Democrats’ triumph in the 2020 election in the state. Kemp did not meet with Biden on Thursday, despite the White House saying he was invited to do so.

Biden and Harris met first responders and survivors and talked about federal assistance, while avoiding party politics. Trump has repeatedly accused both Democrats of abandoning victims of the storm.

Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, has warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) does not have enough funding to make it through the rest of this hurricane season, which typically runs until late November.

Biden has suggested calling the US Congress back from recess, which is supposed to last through the 5 November presidential election, to pass additional funding.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed reporting