Hurricane Helene (2024)

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    Eastern Tennessee Officials Brace Residents for ‘Life Lost’ After Helene

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    There has been “life lost” in Tennessee, an emergency official in the state said on Saturday evening, making it the sixth state where people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, which ravaged the Southeast and left more than 50 dead this week.Jimmy Erwin, the director of emergency management in Unicoi County, Tenn., fought back tears at a news conference as he said there had been some deaths in the storm. He declined to say how many people had died, and the police chief in Erwin, Tenn., Regan Tilson, said no bodies had yet been recovered.Mr. Erwin said five or six people remained missing — a list winnowed significantly from more than 30 missing people earlier in the day — and that search and rescue teams would be looking for people along the Nolichucky River until nightfall. They would then pick back up first thing in the morning.A shelter has been set up at Unicoi County High School.David Kasnic for The New York TimesIn Erwin, Tenn., officials said it could be a week before some in the area have electricity again. David Kasnic for The New York Times“We didn’t think we’d be here today,” Mr. Erwin said. Many residents are without water or power, and he said it could be a week before the electricity returns for some. The county also lost its water treatment plant, and he said anyone with water should boil their drinking water. Showers are being set up at a shelter at a local high school for residents to use.Scenes of devastation abounded throughout the hilly, green Appalachian county of 17,000, particularly in and around Erwin, where a baptist church was surrounded by rubble, and a crumpled R.V. sat in a parking lot filled with debris. Downed trees lay on an impassable highway that cuts through the town.Cody Scott, a Unicoi County commissioner, said he had never seen flooding in the county this bad. His brother had checked on the family’s farm on Friday afternoon and been shaken by what he saw.The Nolichucky River in Erwin, Tenn, contained trees that drifted downstream. David Kasnic for The New York Times“He couldn’t believe his eyes,” Mr. Scott said. “It’s devastated the community.”He said he and his family were evaluating how many trucks, tractors, pumps and other farm equipment they had lost, as well as how much of the farmland was flooded, but that he was most worried about his constituents who had lost homes. He said he was holding out hope that those missing would be found.“The longer it goes, in any type of search and rescue situation, that’s not what you want to hear,” he said. More

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      ‘I’m in Trouble Now’: North Carolinians Face Dangerous Floods From Helene

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      As the Swannanoa River swelled and overflowed from heavy rains brought by Helene, residents of Asheville, N.C., described moments of fear and anxiety amid dangerous flooding in their region.On Friday morning, Janetta Barfield, a 58-year-old nurse at a hospital in Asheville, managed to drive across a high bridge over the river after working a night shift. But then she was met with deep water on the other side of the bridge.She tried to drive through the road that had turned into a lake after seeing another car pass. “If he could do it, I could too,” she remembered thinking at the time.Instead, “I almost drowned,” she said in an interview on Friday — her S.U.V. stalled out, and water quickly seeped into her car and rose to her chest.“I’m in trouble now,” Mrs. Barfield thought to herself in the moment.As she sat in her car, a police officer “got me and pulled me across the water,” she said.After Mrs. Barfield was rescued, she walked down to the river’s edge three times to look for her car and saw box trucks, propane tanks and islands of trash floating in the water. But her S.U.V. was nowhere in sight.Across North Carolina, about 800,000 customers were without power Friday night, with the outages concentrated in western parts of the state. The Asheville Police Department put in place an overnight curfew until 7:30 a.m. on Saturday. The police did not immediately respond to requests for updates on damages and possible injuries or deaths.Asheville, a city of about 94,600, became something of a black hole for cell service on Friday. In the afternoon, about 50 people gathered by Buncombe County Public Library’s main branch in the city’s downtown to use its Wi-Fi.Miranda Escalante, a 38-year-old bartender, was there, trying to reach her family. She knew her sister in nearby Waynesville was safe, but couldn’t get in touch with her father in the community of Swannanoa, which also suffered from powerful floods.Not knowing how her father was faring was “very scary,” Ms. Escalante said. More

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      A Florida Family’s Desperate Flight Through Helene’s Rising Floodwaters

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      Ariel Lopez and his wife, Tiffany, thought Helene would be like Hurricane Idalia, which brought about four inches of storm surge into their home in Shore Acres, a flood-prone neighborhood of St. Petersburg.“We figured, we can handle that,” Ms. Lopez said. “But it turned out to be four feet.”The couple and their four children who live with them had prepared for the storm, putting up water barriers and buying two paddle boards that they could perhaps use to evacuate in a worst-case scenario.On Thursday night, as the storm first approached, it was eerily quiet. Then, suddenly, the water began to rise — two feet in an hour. They feared it would rise to the roof, and made a decision to swim out to safety.Outside, the water was chest-high, dark and moving fast. A few times, they both thought they would die. But they were reluctant to frame their flight as a story of heroics and survival. “I’m not going to say it was one of those things we tackled, like, ‘We got this,’” Mr. Lopez said. “The water was cold.”One of their sons worried that they would all get hypothermia.Finally, they made it to safety at a friend’s house on higher ground, one street over. Almost immediately, they turned around and went back to fetch their five pets, using the paddle boards to ferry them back.Even in the safety of their neighbor’s house, though, there were no celebrations.“We had a family disagreement at like 1 a.m.,” Ms. Lopez said, when their daughter asked why, after so many storms, they had chosen to stay.They didn’t have a good answer. After this experience, the couple said, they have decided to move inland, to higher ground. There, at least, if a hurricane comes, they only have wind, downed trees and power outages to contend with — not a terrifying surge of seawater.“I think this was the final straw,” Mr. Lopez said. More

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      What to Expect From Helene as It Moves North

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      As Helene thrashes the Florida Panhandle with “unsurvivable” storm surge and “catastrophic” winds Thursday evening, people across the Southeast were bracing for the storm’s arrival in their region in the coming hours and days.The worst was expected to hit in the late evening and overnight in the Big Bend of Florida, including Tallahassee. Here’s a look at the next few days.Friday: The storm quickly follows Interstate 75 north out of Florida.The storm is expected to move very quickly overnight, reaching north Georgia by Friday morning, and the worst will be quickly over in Florida. But this storm’s quick pace will mean the core of its most intense winds could extend all the way to near the Atlanta metro area.Because of the vast size of Helene, the tropical storm-force wind gusts are also likely across Georgia and the Carolinas late Thursday and into the day Friday, particularly over the higher terrain of the southern Appalachians.Even worse is the heavy tropical rainfall tied up in the storm, which will push further into the Appalachian Mountains, where the National Weather Service has warned the storm will be one of the most significant “in the modern era.”For the third day in a row, from foothills in Atlanta to mountains in Asheville, where rivers and creeks are already pushed to the brim, even more extreme rain is expected to fall on Friday.The combination of the wind and the wet soil will make it much easier for trees to fall. And it makes the rough terrain susceptible to landslides.As Helene moves north, it will begin to spin around another storm system, which will make it turn left over Tennessee.This weekend: The remnants of the storm will lingerRain will fall across central Kentucky and Tennessee eastward to the central Appalachians and Mid-Atlantic region the remnants of Helene combine with another weather system.This rainfall could result in more flooding as the rains persist through Monday. More

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      In Tallahassee, Residents Worry About a Defining City Feature: Its Trees

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      Tallahassee, Fla., with its towering oaks, stately pines and shaded streets, faces a severe threat to its iconic canopy of trees as Helene approaches.The state’s capital, Tallahassee has long prioritized protecting its trees, which cover more than half the city and are a cherished part of its identity. Its famous canopy roads, shaded by moss-draped live oaks, sweet gums and hickories are a defining feature.Among the city’s notable trees is the Lichgate Oak, an ancient tree that has become a natural landmark. The city is also believed to be the home of two “Moon Trees” — a sycamore and a loblolly pine — grown from seeds taken into space during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971. However, the very trees that shape Tallahassee’s character could become a hazard during the storm. A city report on its urban forest warns that much of the city’s trees are short-lived and have wood that is prone to breakage under stress, making them particularly vulnerable to strong winds. Helene could test this vulnerability. Though Tallahassee is located at least 30 miles inland, the city is under a rare hurricane warning. Forecasters have warned that the storm could bring gusts of up to 75 miles per hour, and potentially stronger winds exceeding 110 m.p.h. The city has never before recorded sustaining hurricane-force winds.Brenda Geddes, 60, a longtime Tallahassee resident who was stocking up at a Walmart on Wednesday in advance of the storm, said of the trees, “When it’s a storm like this, you can only do so much.” In past hurricanes, the city has largely been protected from strong winds because of its geography, but storms have still caused significant damage outside the city.Donna Staab, 67, who lives about an hour and a half southeast of Tallahassee in Keaton Beach, recalled how Hurricane Idalia last year felled over a dozen trees on her neighbor’s property and a few on her own. The sound of wood chippers became a familiar backdrop.“You could hear it for weeks afterward,” Ms. Staab said.The fear of similar destruction is weighing on Tallahassee residents such as Natasha Sutherland, 39, who, along with her husband, decided to head to Alabama for safety on Wednesday. As she drove north, she became emotional while taking in the view of the city’s overhanging trees and her favorite places.“I started crying a little bit,” she said, as a thought occurred to her: “‘Gosh, this might be the last time I see it like this ever again.’” More