Hurricane Helene’s fury was felt most within Florida’s Big Bend region and for Juan further out, resulting in extreme flooding conditions and heavy winds upon making landfall Thursday night. The storm’s reach was from the Gulf Coast of Florida to Georgia and the mountains of the Appalachian drawing more than 40 casualties from four states.
Severe flooding hit the Tampa Bay Area with extensive swathes of streets covered due to the impressive tidal wave that hit the area.
In Southern Georgia, agencies made attempts at pulling people, some of them hurt, who had been trapped inside damaged buildings. Over 2 million people were put under flood watch in North Carolina, while millions more, some as far up as Virginia lost electricity.
The destruction extended over a timeframe of aberrant storm systems to be at least 800 miles from the point of landfall close to the interior Big Bend area of Florida when the panhandle meets the Peninsula. A flash flood warning was issued impacting 20,000 residents of areas near newport, Tennessee following dam failure while a state of emergency was declared after 7000 people were evacuated from one community. In western north Carolina, landslides jeopardized housing and blocked essential highways. An evacuation warning was issued to the area downstream of lake lure dam as the dam at the lake was expected to burst any moment.
Ryan Cole, who works in the emergency services division in Asheville and Buncombe County, characterized the storm as one which will go down in history as the “most horrendous and devastating natural disaster any of us has witnessed in western North Carolina circumstantially’’.
Casualties of the storm included not less than 17 fatalities in South Carolina, at least 15 deaths in Georgia, and seven, death in Florida. The hurricane slammed into the coast shortly before midnight on Thursday as a category four hurricane, with speed thresholds of up to 130 mph and more. According to Governor Ron DeSantis, When a Sign Fell in Tampa, It Killed one Person on the Highway as Several Others Drowned in other regions of the state; A Fatality due to Hurricane Sandy was Reported.
There was also severe weather in the form of tornadoes, with two people reported killed in a tornado in Wheeler County Georgia, as indicated by Local Emergency Management officials.
It is easy to say storms, but the extent of the area where Helene struck was huge, and it’s hard to unravel. For when I lived in Atlanta and was reporting on the hurricane, a television meteorologist had to dive in the floods to save someone who had been screaming out for help from a car which was about to be overrun by floods on air.
