Helene Update: North Carolina Faces ‘Most Significant’ Natural Disaster

Helene has torn through the Southeast, killing at least four dozen people, in what a North Carolina county official called the “most significant natural disaster” the region has experienced in recent years.

The Carolinas were hit hard on Friday, with South Carolina reporting more than 1 million power outages as of early Saturday and North Carolina reporting over 700,000 outages, according to poweroutage.us. In total across the Southeast, more than 3.7 million homes and businesses are without power. Over 48 people have been killed from the storm and the destruction Helene brought with it, according to the Associated Press.

The storm made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with catastrophic 140 mile per hour winds and torrential rain. It had rapidly, within nearly 30 hours, strengthened and transformed from a Category 1 hurricane into a Category 4. The destructive storm made some areas of Florida only reachable by boat.

After making landfall in Florida, it then travelled north, hitting Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and impacting parts of Virginia, West Virginia, Illinois and Ohio.

In North Carolina, heavy rains caused severe flooding and mudslides in the western part of the state, among other destruction. Multiple sections of Interstate 40 running between Tennessee and North Carolina are closed due to mudslides and are washed out, according to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT).

“Shelter in place. All roads in Western N.C. should be considered closed,” NCDOT wrote on its website. More than 400 roads are closed across the state, NCDOT reported.

Newsweek filled out an online contact request form on NCDOT’s website and North Carolina’s Department of Public Safety and Emergency Services for comment on Saturday morning.

“This is the most significant natural disaster that any one of us has ever seen in western North Carolina,” Ryan Cole, Buncombe County assistant emergency services director, told local news station ABC11.

Newsweek reached out to Cole for additional comment via email on Saturday morning.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper requested an expedited Major Disaster Declaration from the federal government on Friday, a move that starts the process for “providing critical financial assistance to people and communities hit hard by the storm.” On Wednesday morning, Cooper declared a State of Emergency in preparation for Helene’s landfall.

In his request, he noted that rainfall on Friday reached up to 20 inches in some parts of the state.

“Helene brought pain and destruction to our state and we’re working to get help to people quickly,” the governor said. “As waters recede and winds die down, families and communities will need assistance to clean up and recover and this request can help speed up the process.”

Asheville, North Carolina, located in Buncombe County, is still grappling with widespread road closures as of Saturday morning. Crews conducted more than 100 swift-water rescues in the county on Friday, according to the local ABC News affiliate.

On Friday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued its final advisory on the storm, writing that “Helene is producing historic and catastrophic flooding over portions of the Southeast and Southern Appalachians.” The post-tropical cyclone is expected to stay over the Tennessee Valley today.

Firsthand accounts and videos published across social media and local news outlets show the widespread flooding and destruction caused by Helene. Photos from Erwin, Tennessee, near the North Carolina-Tennessee border, show dozens of patients and hospital staff stranded on the roof of Unicoi County Hospital, waiting for rescue boats to reach them. Everyone has since been rescued there.

On Friday night, the NHC issued a “life threatening flash flooding” emergency after a dam break on the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, calling it a “particularly dangerous situation.”