Hurricane Helene: Death toll rises to 150 as rescuers scour mountains for survivors

Rescue workers are searching for survivors in the mountains of western North Carolina, trying to contact and deliver aid to hundreds of people cut off by washed-out roads, felled power lines and damaged mobile phone towers following Hurricane Helene.

The death toll from the storm has reached more than 150 people across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, after South Carolina’s authorities announced the discovery of 36 fatalities.

The death toll is expected to rise further once rescue teams reach isolated towns and telecommunications are restored.

North Carolina was coordinating 92 search and rescue teams from 20 states and the US government, according to Governor Roy Cooper. Most efforts were in the Appalachian Mountains that run through the western part of the state where the storm ripped up roads, levelled trees and tossed homes about.

On Monday emergency workers delivered 600,000 meals and a million litres of water to a region where at least one water treatment plant has been damaged by the storm.

Hundreds of roads were closed, and thousands of people have registered for US Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance, officials said on Monday.

Helene was a powerful Category 4 hurricane when it slammed into the Florida Gulf coast on Thursday, tearing a destructive path through southeastern states for several days.

More than 1.7 million homes and businesses in six states from Florida to West Virginia remained without power on Tuesday morning, according to the website Power outages, including about 625,000 in South Carolina and 468,000 in Georgia.

Hundreds of people have been reported missing, a number that is expected to decline as more telecommunications come back on line and emergency workers are able to get into remote areas.

In North Carolina’s mountainous Buncombe County, which includes the tourist destination of Asheville, 40 people have died, county officials said.

John Templeton, 46, evacuated with his family from Fairview, North Carolina, on Saturday, a familiar exercise for him after having evacuated from Houston during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and performing relief work in Gulfport, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“I’m pretty familiar with disaster zones and this is worse than any I’ve seen before,” he said, speaking from the town of Chapel Hill, about 320km east of Asheville.

As Templeton left on the only accessible road out of Asheville he passed a convoy of National Guard vehicles and water trucks coming the other way.

“It was a sinking feeling in my stomach because I knew that everybody still there just had no idea what the coming suffering and misery would look like,” he said.

US President Joe Biden said he would visit North Carolina on Wednesday and Georgia and Florida soon after. He may also ask the US Congress to return to Washington for a special session to pass supplemental aid funding.

with AP