Helene flooding strands hundreds of North Carolina residents as storm’s death toll reaches 90

(CNN) — The Southeast is grappling with widespread devastation after Helene made landfall Thursday as the strongest hurricane on record to slam into Florida’s Big Bend region and tore through multiple states, killing at least 90 people, knocking out power to millions and trapping families in floodwaters. In hard-hit North Carolina, days of unrelenting flooding have turned roads into waterways, left many without basic necessities and strained state resources. Here’s the latest:

• At least 90 dead across 5 states: Deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. At least 36 people are dead in North Carolina, according to county and state officials. At least 24 are dead in South Carolina, including two firefighters in Saluda County, authorities said. In Georgia, at least 17 people have died, two of them killed by a tornado in Alamo, according to a spokesperson for Gov. Brian Kemp. In Florida, at least 11 people have died, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday, including several people who drowned in Pinellas County. Two people have died in Virginia, officials said Sunday.

• Scores of missing persons reports filed amid communication outages: Officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina – where at least 30 people have died – have received more than 1,000 missing persons reports through an online form, County Manager Avril Pinder said Sunday, cautioning the figure likely includes duplicate submissions and communications outages mean people are struggling to reach one another. The governor echoed that, telling reporters in a news conference, “We know that a lot of these people are simply out of communication and are OK.” The state’s telecommunications partners activated disaster roaming on all networks, meaning “any phone on any carrier can access any network to place calls,” state Emergency Management Director William Ray said.

• Hundreds of roads closed in the Carolinas, hampering water delivery: About 300 roads are closed in North Carolina and another 150 are closed in South Carolina, acting Federal Highway Administrator Kristin White of the US Department of Transportation said Sunday. North Carolina officials on Sunday acknowledged those closures have hampered delivery of water supplies to communities in need, like the city of Weaverville in Buncombe County, which is without both power and water, Mayor Patrick Fitzsimmons said. Seven water plants across the state – in Avery, Burke, Haywood, Jackson, Rutherford, Watauga and Yancey counties – were closed as of Saturday, impacting nearly 70,000 households, Gov. Cooper’s office said. Seventeen water plants reported having no power. There are 50 boil water advisories in effect across western communities.

• Millions without power in Southeast: The remnants of Helene continued to knock out power for several states across the eastern US on Saturday, with about 2.4 million customers left in the dark in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us. On Sunday, a US Department of Energy spokesperson said there was no estimated timeframe for the restoration of power, noting widespread flooding and debris has impeded access to damaged infrastructure.

• ‘It looks like a bomb went off’ in Georgia: Helene “spared no one,” Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday. Among the 17 people who died in Georgia were a mother and her 1-month-old twin boys, a 7-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, and a 58-year-old man, according to Kemp. “It looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off,” Kemp said.

• South Carolina ‘devastated’ by Helene: The National Weather Service office in Greenville-Spartanburg, South Carolina, said Saturday it is “devastated by the horrific flooding and widespread wind damage that was caused by Hurricane Helene.” The agency called it “the worst event in our office’s history,” in a Facebook post Saturday evening.

• ‘Complete obliteration’ along Florida coast: Days after Helene slammed Florida on Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane, countless residents are displaced, boil water notices are in place in multiple counties and power is out for over 186,000 customers. “You see some just complete obliteration for homes,” DeSantis said Saturday, noting Helene impacted some of the same communities affected by hurricanes Idalia last year and Debby last month.

• Additional rain expected: Helene dumped “staggering” amounts of rain, including 12 to 14 inches in South Carolina, 12 to 16 inches in Florida and 12 to 14 inches in Georgia, said Ken Graham, the director of the National Weather Service. The storm became a post-tropical cyclone on Friday, but rainfall is expected to continue this weekend across parts of the southern Appalachian region: Additional totals of half an inch are expected for areas of western North Carolina, including Asheville, and eastern Tennessee, including Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg. Up to 2 inches is possible for portions of Virginia and West Virginia through Monday. “Additional rainfall is not expected to exacerbate ongoing flooding but may lead to excessive runoff due to saturated soils,” the weather service said Sunday morning.

‘We all really need help here’

Since Helene started swamping the region, it’s turned neighborhoods into lakes, lifted cars like toys, snapped trees like twigs and left businesses underwater. Piles of thick mud and floating debris blocked streets as torrential rains collapsed roadways and washed out bridges. It’s left hundreds of people in North Carolina stranded in homes, hospitals or transportation systems, awaiting rescue.

“The priority is getting people out,” North Carolina Gov. Cooper told CNN affiliate Spectrum News. “And getting supplies in.”

But officials face a major hurdle: “Everything is flooded. It is very difficult for them to see exactly what the problems are,” Cooper said.

On Friday, Stevie Hollander watched as floodwaters inundated his Asheville apartment complex, where he lives on the second floor with his sister and her fiancé.

“The water almost reached us but thankfully went down,” he told CNN. Most residents on the first floor left before their units were submerged, while other relocated to stay with residents on higher floors.

“We all really need help here. We need water, power of sorts, food, gas. Anything.” he said, “We just don’t really know what to do.”

Hollander and his family attempted to drive north Saturday, but road closures forced them to return to the apartment. The family only has four water bottles left and little nonperishable food, Hollander said.

In Black Mountain, North Carolina, Sofia Grace Kunst contended with another problem: a landslide she said tore through the window and wall of a dining hall where she was playing Uno with six friends while on a weeklong trip.

It was exactly 9:10 a.m. Friday when mud and debris shattered a window and poured into the room, she said.

“Landslide! Everybody run,” someone yelled.

“I see this giant wave of like mud and trees and rocks just coming towards us,” Kunst told CNN, estimating it was 5 or 6 feet high.

She ran into the main room of the dining hall, only to see the wall completely cave in. The group fled to the porch, where many of her peers were crying. Kunst sat in shock, barefoot.

It was only then she realized she still had her Uno cards in hand.

The group eventually trekked through muddy water, seeking refuge in a parking lot on higher ground. They were stranded there for some time, but eventually reached a shelter.

“That’s when it hit most people. There were a lot of tears,” Kunst said. “For me, it really didn’t hit me emotionally, but my body started reacting. I started shaking like crazy. I felt like I had to, like, scream or let off energy,” Kunst said.

As day broke Saturday, Patrick McNamara, who runs a small milk distribution business in Asheville, got his first glimpse at the destruction left by Helene.

“The floodwaters were 4 feet above the dock,” McNamara said. “So the entire building has been wiped out.”

His business machinery was strewn across the warehouse, milk spoiled and inches of mud pilled all over the floor. McNamara estimates he’ll have to get rid of thousands of gallons of milk.

McNamara, concerned about access to resources, said he may have to consider relocating the business to another facility.

As he begins a lengthy cleanup process, McNamara said he is confident the community will be able to patch itself together and have a successful tourist season despite the devastation.

CNN’s Lauren Mascarenhas, Eric Levenson, Isabel Rosales, Taylor Galgano, Sara Smart, Conor Powell, Caroll Alvarado, Caroline Jaime, Emma Tucker, Artemis Moshtaghian, Paradise Afshar and Raja Razek contributed to this report.

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