 "Hurricane Helen, Hurricane Helen")
Homes and vehicles damaged by flash flooding from Hurricane Helen lie on the side of the road near the Swannanoa River. (Photo: PTI)
The death toll from Hurricane Helen rose to 227 on Saturday, as the grueling task of recovering bodies continues more than a week after the superstorm battered the Southeast, leaving six U.S. states dead.
Helen made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26, causing widespread destruction as it moved north from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads, and knocking out electricity and cell phone service for millions. Ta.
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The death toll on Friday was 225. Two more cases were recorded in South Carolina the next day. The number of people missing and missing is still unknown, and the death toll is likely to rise further.
Helen is the worst hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005. About half of the victims were in North Carolina, with dozens more in Georgia and South Carolina.
The city of Asheville, located in the mountains of western North Carolina, was particularly hard hit. A week later, workers used brooms and heavy equipment to clean up mud and dirt outside the New Belgium Brewing Company. The New Belgium Brewing Company is located next to the French Broad River, and thousands of businesses and households across the city have been affected.
To date, North Carolinians have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Mary Ann Tierney, the agency’s regional administrator. More than 83,000 people have signed up for individual assistance, according to Gov. Roy Cooper’s office.
In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA has approved more than $12 million in assistance to survivors, Tierney said at a news conference Saturday.
“This is important support to help people with their immediate needs, but also evacuation support to help people who are unable to remain in their homes,” she said.
She encouraged residents affected by the storm to sign up for disaster assistance.
“This is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We need immediate relief in terms of food, water, medicine and other life safety, assistance with critical needs to replace critical goods, and assistance with evacuation if you cannot remain at home. We can provide it.”
Helen’s devastating floods shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland, far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including the Tennessee Mountains that Dolly Parton calls home.
The country music star announced he is donating $1 million to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit organization providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helen flood victims.
Additionally, her East Tennessee business and the Dollywood Foundation are also collaborating, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with $1 million.
Parton said she feels a close connection to the storm’s victims because many of them “grew up in the mountains, just like me.”
“I can’t bear to see anyone hurt, so after this terrible flood, I wanted to do what I could,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little light in the world during this dark time for our friends, neighbors, and even strangers.”
John Farner, president and CEO of Walmart U.S., said the company will step up its efforts, including with Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, and will donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts.
In Newport, a town of about 7,000 people in eastern Tennessee, residents continued Saturday to clean up the destruction caused by flooding from the Helen River.
Mud still caked on the basement walls of a Main Street funeral home. The ground floor of another nearby chapel was drying out, and a picture of Jesus still hung on the wall of a bleak room.
Newport City Hall and the police department also drew water from the swollen Pigeon River. Some of the modest one-story houses along the riverbank were destroyed, walls crumbling and rooms exposed.
Further east, in unincorporated Del Rio, residents and volunteers were hard at work cleaning up along a bend in the French Broad River. The smell of wood filled the air as people used chainsaws to cut through fallen trees, and bobcats beeped as they moved shattered metal plates and other debris. Many houses suffered damage, including sliding off their foundations.
(Only the headline and photo in this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff. The rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First publication date: October 6, 2024 | 8:30 AM IST
