Dozens of deaths, millions without power, billions in damage: the historic arc of Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern U.S. as it raced through, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without any power and for some a continued threat of floods.

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140 mph and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

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. 

A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

Among the at least 44 people killed in the storm were a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. More deaths included two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

In the wealthy enclave of Davis Islands in Tampa, where star athletes like Derek Jeter and Tom Brady have lived, residents were continuing to clean up Saturday from storm surge left by Helene.

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

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.

Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

Florida’s Big Bend is a part of the state where salt marshes and pine flatwoods stretch into the horizon, and where the condo developments and strip malls that have carved up so much of the state’s coastlines are largely absent.

It’s a place where Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix Lucy could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.

At least, until her house was carried away by Helene.

Friday afternoon, Hartway wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited her home. “It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said of her house.

Big Bend has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.




(AP Photo Kate Payne)