Hurricane Helene has killed at least 26 people in the US, ABC News said on Friday.
Washington DC: Eleven people, including a first responder who helped others, were killed in the state of Georgia, and another seven deaths were reported in Florida, the report said.
Six people have died in South Carolina and one in North Carolina, according to the report. A White House official said that US President Joe Biden was briefed on the latest impacts of Hurricane Helene.
Hurricane Helene weakened to a tropical storm after it made landfall in the United States late on Thursday.
Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because or landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There were hundreds of water rescues, 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.
The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachians, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.
Among the at least 44 people killed in the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Florida, she knew it was time to escape.
In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail.
People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there; although officials later said the structure had not failed. Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.
Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X.