Helene death toll climbs past 100 as Southeast digs out from devastation

The number of storm-related deaths climbed past 100 across the Southeast on Sunday, as authorities rushed to airdrop supplies, restore power and clear roads after massive rains from the powerful Helene left people stranded and without shelter. 

Helene has left at least 116 people dead, CBS News has confirmed, and caused widespread destruction and knocked out power to several million people. Thirty fatalities were reported in Buncombe County, in North Carolina, one of the states that was hardest hit by the storm.

The storm crashed ashore in Florida’s Big Bend area on Thursday night as a dangerous Category 4 storm. Helene was the third hurricane to hit the Big Bend region in the last 13 months.

From there, it quickly moved through Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it “looks like a bomb went off” after seeing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air.

Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

The storm was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.

Millions of residents in the region remained without power Sunday afternoon, according to utility tracker Find Energy. 

But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday night that 99% of the state had power.

At least 116 people across multiple states were killed by Helene, a monster storm that caused a path of devastation that stretched over 600 miles. 

In North Carolina, 46 people were killed, officials confirmed to CBS News, ranging in age from 4 to 75. One person died in a collision on a flooded road, Gov. Roy Cooper said, while another was killed when a tree fell on a house, according to the Mecklenburg Emergency Medical Services Agency. 

At least 25 people were killed in Georgia, according to a spokesperson for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. A first responder was among the dead, Kemp said earlier Friday. 

In South Carolina, 27 people died from the storm, officials confirmed to CBS News. The deaths include two firefighters and two people who were killed when trees fell on residences.

In Florida, 13 people were killed officials confirmed to CBS News, including 10 people who died in Pinellas County. Statewide, crews have conducted thousands of rescue missions. 

“This is an unprecedented tragedy that requires an unprecedented response,” Cooper said at a press conference Sunday. He added that “we know there will be more” deaths as rescuers reach isolated areas.

Four weather-related fatalities were confirmed in Tennessee, one in Johnson County, one in Unicoi County and two in Cocke County. 

In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin confirmed in a Friday news conference that one person was killed.

The National Weather Service on Saturday reported the highest rainfall totals from Helene for each state. The rural northwest North Carolina area of Busick has received the highest overall rainfall, with a staggering 30.78 inches so far.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, who traveled to Florida on Saturday to survey the damage, said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that the “historic flooding” in North Carolina has gone beyond what anyone could have planned for in the area.  

“I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides that they are experiencing right now,” she said.

Asheville, North Carolina, was particularly hard hit as rising floodwaters damaged roads, led to power outages and cut off cellphone service.

On Sunday, Cooper asked residents to avoid traveling on roadways in western North Carolina.

“Many people are cut off because the roads are impassable,” he said.

President Biden has issued emergency declarations for Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, all of which free up federal resources that will go towards recovery and assistance efforts.

More than 800 FEMA personnel have been deployed to the region to assist in the response, the White House said.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the U.S. is between $95 billion and $110 billion.

In East Tennessee, the flooding was so bad that two dams were at risk of failing. The Cocke County city of Newport was evacuated as a result, but both dams ultimately held.

“Rescues have been made, attempts have been made, some people are stranded on the roofs of their homes and things like that,” Cocke County Sheriff CJ Ball said.

The Gulf Coast community of Keaton Beach, Florida, was still recovering from Idalia and Debby when Helene appeared to deliver the knockout punch. Taylor County officials estimate that 90% of homes in Keaton Beach are gone.

And further south in Cedar Key, officials say it is not safe for residents or rescue workers. 

In the waters off Florida’s Sanibel Island, a Coast Guard crew made a daring rescue, saving a man and his dog who were stranded on his 36-foot sailboat.

In the Big Bend fishing village of Steinhatchee, storm-weary residents prayed Helene would miss them, but the waterside docks and restaurants that once stood here though are now gone.

The storm surge shoved buildings off their foundations. Linda Wicker lost the restaurant she had owned for 20 years. She seemed more shaken by what she saw across her village, homes torn apart by the wind and the deep water.

“If you let it play with your mind, you just can’t go there,” Wicker said. “You can’t. It’s horrible.”

On historic Davis Islands in Tampa, streets were under water and boats had washed up on land. One home was gutted by flames. Marie Terry, who lives next door, would have been in the neighborhood unless her daughter had insisted she evacuate.

“I’m just in shock,” Terry told CBS News. “It’s just such a beautiful house, and to see it like this, it’s like, what could have happened?”

In Atlanta, an apartment complex flooded, and neighbors had to rescue each other. Sam Oni, 83, was one of them.

“But I thought I would somehow escape it, but I did not…and I owe a lot to my neighbors,” Oni told CBS News.

Serena Rodriguez was asleep in bed in her Atlanta home when she started floating, but it was not dream.

“It was like all around, the water, it was like an island,” Rodriguez told CBS News. “…A nightmare mostly. Yeah, I was it was insane. Like, I couldn’t believe it. I was in shock all the time. I never experienced anything like it.”

Annie Sloan, who was one of them, told CBS News Miami: “I decided to come to the shelter because I live alone and basically my son came to take me to Georgia, but we discovered the hurricane was going to Georgia also, and I decided to just come here and shelter because my husband passed, and I don’t want to be home alone.”

Most gas stations in the Tallahassee area were shut down or out of gas. CBS News senior weather and climate producer David Parkinson described Helene as a “gargantuan” storm.

NASA shared video of the hurricane as seen from the International Space Station, showing the size of the storm as it churned through the Gulf of Mexico Thursday afternoon.

Exceptionally warm Gulf water fuels hurricanes

Record-warm water in the Gulf almost certainly acted like jet fuel in intensifying the storm. Brian McNoldy, senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, recently noted that ocean heat content in the Gulf of Mexico is the highest on record. Warm water is a necessary ingredient to strengthen tropical systems.

Sea surface temperatures in the path of Helene were as warm as 89 degrees Fahrenheit — 2 to 4 degrees above normal.

These record water temperatures have been made significantly more likely by human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central. The North Atlantic Ocean as a whole has seen record warm temperatures in 2024, storing 90% of the excess heat from climate change produced by greenhouse gas pollution.

Helene is the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1.

contributed to this report.