Cleanup Begins as Scores Are Left Homeless After Helene

Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, without shelter, and awaiting rescue on Saturday—as the cleanup began after the tempest that killed at least 52 people, caused widespread destruction across the US Southeast, and left millions without power. Helene blew ashore in Florida's Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 140mph and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks, churning up tornadoes and straining dams. "It looks like a bomb went off," said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp after surveying the damage from the air, the AP reports.

Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There have been hundreds of water rescues, and they continued into Saturday in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville is under water. "To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement," said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff. The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. It's creating flooding that hasn't been this bad in a century in North Carolina. And in Atlanta, where only car roofs peeked above floodwaters in some neighborhoods, 11.12 inches of rain fell over 48 hours. That's the most the city has seen since record keeping began in 1878.

President Biden on Saturday called the devastation "overwhelming" and said his administration was committed to helping the huge region impacted by the storm to recover, per the AP. Helene is the deadliest tropical storm in South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it came ashore just north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths also have been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Moody's Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage. AccuWeather's preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the US is between $95 billion and $110 billion.

(More Hurricane Helene stories.)