Tropical Weather Latest: Millions still without power from Helene as flooding continues

The remnants of Hurricane Helene dissipated Saturday but millions remain without power across the Southeast and officials warned that record-breaking river flooding is ongoing in parts of southern Appalachia.

The storm has been blamed for at least 56 deaths across five states, including 23 people in South Carolina and 11 in Florida. But the death toll is sure to rise as authorities continue to take stock of Helene’s devastation. In hard-hit Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Asheville is located, authorities said they know people died but aren’t announcing anything because communication outages haven’t allowed them to reach relatives of the victims.

The hurricane roared ashore Thursday night as a Category 4 storm on Florida’s Gulf Coast and then quickly moved Friday through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Tropical Storm John made its second landfall along Mexico’s Pacific coast Friday, while in its wake authorities in the resort city of Acapulco called for help from anyone with a boat to deal with the flooding. It has since dissipated over Mexico.

Follow AP’s coverage of tropical weather at https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes.

Here’s the latest:

Harris says Biden administration is acting to help states hit by hurricane

Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday that the Biden administration has taken steps to get aid to the states hit by Hurricane Helene.

“Federal personnel are on the ground to support families that have been impacted so that critical resources like food, water, and generators are available,” Harris said in a statement. “We have also approved emergency declarations for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee – making resources and funding available to maximize our coordinated response efforts at the local, state, and federal levels.”

Harris added that the Biden administration “will remain in constant contact with state and local officials. I have been briefed by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and will continue to receive regular updates.”

Biden directs officials to find ways to ‘speed support’ to communities

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — President Joe Biden was briefed on Saturday evening by FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall on the devastating impact Hurricane Helene wrought on the southeast, according to the White House.

The briefing came after Criswell on Saturday visited the hard-hit Big Bend community in Florida. She is set to visit Georgia on Sunday and North Carolina on Monday to get a first-hand look at the damage.

Biden, according to the White House, directed Criswell and Sherwood-Randall to focus on how the administration “can speed support” to communities, including the immediate deployment of additional search and rescue teams into North Carolina.

Largest Georgia city in path of hurricane faces shortages of water, gas and electricity

Water, gasoline and electricity remain in short supply in the largest Georgia city that was directly in the path of Hurricane Helene.

Augusta-Richmond County Mayor Garnett Johnson said during a Saturday afternoon news conference that 1,000 Georgia Power linemen are working to restore electricity in the city of 200,000.

“I can’t assure you we’re going to have power in the next one, two or three days,” Johnson said. “Some of us may get lucky and others may not.”

For now, a lack of electricity means few functioning gas stations in Augusta.

“Right now there are very limited resources in this community, If you don’t have gasoline, there’s not a lot out there,” Johnson said.

Gov. Brian Kemp told WJBF-TV that state officials are sending generators to convenience stores so they can turn on their pumps.

Johnson said water pressure is low citywide, and workers are having trouble reaching water main breaks. Both Johnson and officials in the neighboring areas of Columbia County, Georgia, and Aiken, South Carolina, emphatically denied rumors that utility workers would shut down entire water systems.

“So we highly encourage you just to be patient,” Johnson said. “Do not use any water that you don’t need.”

Two fire stations were handing out water donated by the Augusta Ironman triathlon after the race, scheduled for Sunday, was canceled.

Tennessee governor calls hurricane damage ‘heartbreaking’

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and other state and federal officials toured east Tennessee by helicopter on Saturday, viewing a scene Lee called “heartbreaking.”

“There’s a great deal of damage, a great deal of heartache, a great deal of work to be done,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger expressed disbelief at the extent of the damage.

“It’s something like we’ve never seen in this part of the state,” she said. “Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in east Tennessee?”

Football team endures 16-hour ordeal to get to game in South Carolina

Flooding turned a bus trip from Johnson City, Tennessee, into a 16-hour ordeal for the East Tennessee State University football Buccaneers on their way to play the Citadel.

Bus drivers found higher ground in Asheville, North Carolina, on their way to Charleston, South Carolina, with kickoff pushed back three hours Saturday.

East Tennessee State coach Tre Lamb wrote on social media that a man who gave coaches a ride to find shelter let them know Interstate 26 South had opened up. The coach also thanked a grocery store for providing his team with food.

Family members drown, despite a relative’s online plea for help

Posting from Texas on Friday, Jessica Drye Turner begged for someone to rescue her family members stranded on their rooftop in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by rising flood waters. “They are watching 18 wheelers and cars floating by,” Turner wrote in an urgent Facebook post.

But in a follow-up message, which became widely circulated on social media on Saturday, Turner said help had not arrived in time to save her parents, both in their 70s, and her 6-year-old nephew. The roof had collapsed and the three drowned. “I cannot convey in words the sorrow, heartbreak and devastation my sisters and I are going through nor imagine the pain before us,” she wrote.

Jeff Muenstermann and his wife Lisa, friends of Turner’s, told The Associated Press on Saturday they had spoken to Turner after she posted the initial plea for help. At her request, they messaged members of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, where they all attend, to pray for the family’s safety back in North Carolina.

“I just thought they were going to be rescued,” Jeff Muenstermann said. “I asked everybody to pray and they did. And then a couple hours later, her husband called me, completely distraught and said … we lost them. They all drowned.”

Muenstermann said Turner and her husband flew to North Carolina on Saturday to be with Turner’s sister, the mother of the boy who drowned.

“We talked to her last night and we talked to her again today and she’s trying to be real strong,” he said of Turner.

People in western North Carolina are being airlifted from their homes

LAKE LURE, N.C. — Authorities in western North Carolina are using helicopters to rescue people who have been stranded since Helene slammed into the region on Friday.

Rutherford County officials posted on social media that they are working to airlift people from the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village area, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.

“As soon as we receive the names of those rescued, we will make every effort to reach out to families and individuals who have inquired about their loved ones,” officials said.

Most of those who were killed in Florida lived in the Tampa Bay area

Ten of the 11 people who died in Florida as a result of Hurricane Helene lived in the Tampa Bay area, officials said Saturday. The other victim was killed when a tree fell on a house in Dixie County, in north Florida.

Nine of the victims lived in mandatory evacuation zones in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Each of those victims drowned in their homes, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. They ranged in age from 37 to 89.

The other victim died when a sign fell onto a car in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood.

A Georgia town is having a cookout to feed locals with thawing meat

GROVETOWN, Ga. — With power out and freezers thawing after Hurricane Helene, one Georgia town is having a cookout.

Officials in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, are inviting people to bring their thawing meat to the city garage to cook it for workers and residents.

“We are feeding the community and our crews while supplies last,” the city wrote on its Facebook page.

More than 99% of customers in Columbia County, Georgia, which includes Grovetown, remained without electricity Saturday according to PowerOutage.us. Georgia Power Co., the dominant electricity provider in the county, says it doesn’t yet have an estimate when power will be restored.

“We have no updates as it pertains to power but have seen several crews around the area,” the city wrote in the social media post. “This obviously does not mean power will be restored soon, necessarily, however, crews are working to make this process as efficient as possible.”

Biden ‘deeply saddened’ by deaths and devastation caused by Helene

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life and devastation from Helene and that he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the families. Biden was being regularly briefed by his team on the storm, and the leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in the region assessing the damage, along with local officials.

“The road to recovery will be long, but know that my Administration will be with you every step of the way. We’re not going to walk away. We’re not going to give up,” he said.

Eastern Georgia hit especially hard by Helene

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Helene left a wide swath of destruction on the east side of the state.

“What is looks like from the air is it looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off,” Kemp told reporters in Valdosta. “And it’s not just here, it looks like this from here all the way to Augusta.”

“This is certainly going to be multiple days of outage,” Georgia Power Co. CEO Kim Greene said.

Biden says Helene’s devastation is ‘overwhelming’

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday called the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene “overwhelming” and said his administration was committed to helping the huge swath of the Southeast affected by the storm recover.

In a statement posted on X, Biden said he continues to be briefed by his team about the storm as it tracks north.

“My Administration has been with the people of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee since before Helene made landfall,” Biden said in the social media post. “And we’ll be on the ground with them helping them recover long after this storm has passed.”

Earlier Saturday, Biden approved a federal emergency declaration for Tennessee. Biden approved emergency declarations for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina before the storm made landfall.

The declarations authorize FEMA to provide assistance for emergency measures to save lives, protect property, public health and safety, and fund other emergency response measures.

More than 800,000 customers in Georgia still without power

ATLANTA — Utilities in Georgia continue to warn that it will take a significant amount of time to restore remaining electrical outages. Georgia Power Co. said Saturday morning that while it had restored power to more than 450,000 customers, more than 525,000 of its 2.6 million customers remained without electricity. Georgia Electric Membership Corp., which represents electric cooperatives, said it had restored more than 110,000 outages but nearly 320,000 remain.

“Unfortunately, treacherous conditions remain across the state with crews navigating extensive tree damage, persisting flooding conditions and many road closures,” said Georgia Power, the state’s only private electric utility, in a news release.

The electric cooperatives continued to warn of serious damage to high-voltage transmission lines and the substations that convert high-voltage power into the electricity that is delivered to customers.

“The damage to the supply side of the electrical grid from Helene is extensive, surpassing that of 2018’s Hurricane Michael in many areas, and will take longer to assess and repair.” Georgia EMC said.

Georgia Power said it will have to replace thousands of broken power poles and said it is still assessing damage in the hardest-hit areas in the eastern half of the state. The company said it hopes to be able to estimate when service will be restored by later Saturday.

Residents of Florida’s Big Bend grapple with third hurricane since last summer

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. — Residents of rural Taylor County in Florida’s Big Bend went years without taking a direct hit from a hurricane. But after three storms in a little over a year, the area is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway.

“It’s wiped out a lot. It’s bringing everybody to reality about what this is now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway.

The town of about 1,000 people an hour and a half southeast of Tallahassee sits at the mouth of the Steinhatchee River, flowing out into Deadman Bay and on into the Gulf. It’s a beloved slice of what locals call Old Florida, where generations of families have cherished memories of living along the river and scalloping in the bay.

A number of businesses in town had just reopened ahead of scallop season a few months ago, after sustaining damage from Hurricane Idalia in August 2023. Then a year later, Hurricane Debby washed ashore. Now, Helene came through like a buzzsaw, blowing apart what took decades to build, like a waterfront restaurant called Roy’s, where residents could watch the sun disappear over the salt marshes stretching into the horizon.

Now Roy’s, like many other buildings in town, is just a pile of debris.

“None has ever wiped out Roy’s,” Berg said. “It’s gone. And now to replace it, they have to go a minimum of probably 12, 15 feet in the air to rebuild it.”

The threat of a potential dam collapse in Tennessee eases

NASHVILLE — The threat of a potential dam collapse in eastern Tennessee, near the North Carolina border, was easing on Saturday morning.

Around midnight the Tennessee Valley Authority had issued an emergency warning that the Nolichucky Dam could breach at any time. An update later on Saturday said the Nolichucky River had crested at 8 feet (2.4 meters) over previous record elevations and was receding at about 1 foot (0.3 meters) per hour.

“Our Dam Safety teams are in the process of assessing the condition of the dam to determine next steps,” TVA posted on X.

All roads in western North Carolina are considered closed

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina, said in a Saturday news conference, that all roads in western North Carolina should be considered closed. Interstate 40 and I-26 were impassible in multiple locations. Other roads were washed out or blocked by fallen trees and debris.

More than 100,000 Duke Energy customers in the area were without power. In Asheville, there was no cellular service and no timeline for when it would be restored. Residents were also directed to boil their water. Meanwhile, nearby Woodfin had no running water.

“We have had some loss of life,” County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters. However, he said they were not ready to report any specifics. Officials have been hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages.

Jones said the area experienced a cascade of emergencies that included heavy rain, high winds and mudslides.

Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.

“It’s not that we (were) not prepared, but this is going to another level,” Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement.”

Death toll rises to at least 52, including 11 in Florida

DEKLE BEACH, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Saturday that there have been at least 11 storm-related deaths in Florida.

The deaths included traffic fatalities and people caught up in storm surge, the governor said during a news conference.

“There were no fatalities in Taylor County, which is where the storm made landfall,” DeSantis said, adding that he credits the people of hard-hit Taylor County for heeding the warnings.

“If you had told me there was going to be 15 to 18 feet of storm surge, even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had multiple fatalities.”

Residents lining up for food in hard-hit Florida town

PERRY, Fla. — The cars started lining up before the sun rose on Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, near where the storm made landfall. Dozens of vehicles wound through the parking lot and out onto U.S. Highway 27, filled with families who are running out of food in a county where, as of Saturday morning, 99% of customers didn’t have power.

Sierra Land said although her home seems to have dodged any major damage, with no electricity, she’s lost everything in her refrigerator.

“We’re making it one day at a time,” Land said.

Land said she arrived at the Convoy of Hope distribution site with her two sons, ages 5 and 10, and her grandmother between 6:30 and 7 a.m., more than three hours before volunteers were expected to begin handing out food, water and hygiene kits.

“There was no reason to sit at the house. Not when we needed to be in the line,” Land said. “The kids … they needed to get out and see something besides the four walls.”

If they can sort out how to keep themselves fed, they can focus on other concerns, like Land’s grandfather Franklin Ratliff, who has dementia and COPD and hasn’t been able to use his oxygen since Helene shredded the area’s power grid.

“With his dementia, his focal point is watching TV. And there’s no TV. So it’s been a lot of having to talk with him. Keep him in good spirits because he still doesn’t understand what happened,” Land said. “He kept trying to get up and go outside during the storm.”

Western North Carolina inundated by flooding

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Western North Carolina has been essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. Video shows sections of Asheville underwater.

Francine Cavanaugh said she has been totally unable to reach her sister, son, or friends in the Asheville area.

“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”

Cavanaugh said her sister had no idea how bad the storm would be there. She told Cavanaugh she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”

She saw video of a grocery store near the cabins that was completely flooded.

“I think that people are just completely stuck, wherever they are, with no cell service, no electricity.”

Locals grateful no one was killed in Tampa neighborhood that saw unprecedented storm surge

TAMPA, Fla. — Davis Islands, the Tampa neighborhood that star athletes like baseball’s Derek Jeter and football’s Tom Brady have called home, was cleaning up Saturday after Helene’s chest-high storm surge tore through its streets the day before.

The two islands sit just off the city’s downtown and are home to about 5,000 people. The neighborhood had never seen storm surge like it had Friday. No one died, but homes, businesses and apartments were flooded.

Authorities warned residents to evacuate, and many did, but some stayed behind.

”I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” Faith Pilafas told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve kind of gotten accustomed to lots of talk about big storms, and never actually like feeling the effects of it. So for all the people who didn’t leave the island, I feel like they were all just expecting it to be a normal storm, anticlimactic. And wow, were we surprised.”

A 24-year-old restaurant worker, she and her boyfriend watched from their second-floor apartment as the water rose to over 4 feet (1.2 meters). Her boyfriend used his kayak to help people get off the island.

“I mean, just every single business is, like, totally destroyed,” she told the newspaper. “But we don’t know anybody who is seriously injured, and so we’re just really grateful that didn’t happen.”

Debra Ogston returned to her Italian restaurant to find that its heavy coolers had been overturned. She said the job now will be to clean up and reopen.

“We’re resilient,” she told the newspaper. “We’re going to go for progress, not perfection. … The damage here is annoying, and a little heartbreaking. But it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced.”

Vice President Harris urges residents affected by Helene to heed local officials

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday urged residents impacted by Hurricane Helene to pay heed to local authorities as the storm continues to wreak havoc on a significant swath of the southeast.

“The storm continues to be dangerous and deadly, and lives have been lost and the risk of flooding still remains high,” Harris said at the start of a campaign speech in Douglas, Arizona. “So, I continue to urge everyone to please continue to follow guidance from your local officials until we get past this moment.”

Dozens rescued by helicopter from a flooded Tennessee hospital

NASHVILLE — There have been hundreds of water rescues due to Helene, but perhaps none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

Some 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital while water rapidly flooded the facility, according to Ballad Health.

Ballad Health said on social media that county officials had ordered an evacuation of the hospital Friday morning due to rising water in the Nolichucky River, including 11 patients.

After other helicopters failed to reach the hospital because of the storm’s winds, a Virginia State Police helicopter was able to land on the roof. Three National Guard helicopters with hoist capabilities were sent and Ballad Health assisted with its own helicopter, officials said. After about four hours, all of the staff and patients had been rescued.

▶ Read more about Friday’s dramatic rescue

The Associated Press