At Least 22 People Have Died and Helene is Far From Done

At least 22 people are dead after Hurricane Helene tore inland from Florida. At least eleven those were in Georgia, seven in Florida, and others in the Carolinas, and even though the winds of the storm have now died down the water is still wreaking havoc.

Georgia governor Brian Kemp has said emergency crews are struggling to reach flooded and damaged buildings, some likely with people inside. In North Carolina, entire chunks of cities like Asheville are under water; officials issued an urgent evacuation warning for anyone below the Lake Lure dam, which threatened to fail entirely but so far has held. Governor Roy Cooper called Helene “one of the worst storms in modern history.”

Stream gages across a thousand-mile stretch of the country are showing record-high levels, well into “major flood stage” and beyond. In Florida, where the storm moved quickly but brought a “wall of water” storm surge and 140-mph winds, one resident of Cedar Key described the chaos to the New York Times: “Vehicles are smashed in and turned upside down. Everything is impassable. It looks like a nuclear bomb went off.”

Though Helene is a hurricane no longer, it is not done. The remnants will now meander across Tennessee before parking over Kentucky for a day or two, bringing further destruction along with it. “Historic, catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding, including numerous significant landslides, will continue,” the latest National Hurricane Center update said. Flooding and other warnings abound across the region; the scope of the damage, and the final tally of casualties, may take a while to become clear.