(Swannanoa) Corpse search dogs and search teams waded through knee-deep mud and debris in the mountains of western North Carolina Tuesday, searching for more hurricane victims Helenedays after the storm carved a deadly and destructive path across the Southeast.
Meanwhile, across the border in eastern Tennessee, a caravan including Gov. Bill Lee surveying the damage outside the town of Erwin passed a crew removing two bodies rubble, a grim reminder that rescue and recovery operations are still underway and the death toll – already above 160 – is likely to rise.
The storm, which was one of the deadliest in U.S. history, knocked out power and cell service in some cities, leaving many people frustrated, hot and increasingly worried as it progressed. days. Some cooked food on charcoal grills or walked on high ground hoping to find a signal to let loved ones know they are alive.
In Augusta, Georgia, Sherry Brown converted electricity from her car’s alternator to run her refrigerator and took “bird baths” with water she collected in coolers. In another part of the city, people queued for more than three hours to try to get water at one of five centers set up to serve more than 200,000 people.
PHOTO MIKE CARLSON, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
A woman kayaks in Saint Petersburg, Florida.
The devastation was particularly severe in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where at least 57 people died in Asheville, North Carolina, a tourist haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.
“Communities have been wiped off the map,” North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference Tuesday.
In Swannanoa, a small community outside Asheville, receding waters revealed cars stacked on top of each other and trailers that had floated during the storm. The roads were covered in mud and debris and riddled with sinkholes.
Cliff Stewart survived two feet of rain pouring into his home, damaging the wheels of his wheelchair and sending his medicine bottles flying from room to room. Without electricity and dependent on food deliveries from friends, he refused offers of help to leave.
“Where am I going to go?,” the Marine Corps veteran said Tuesday. That’s all I have. I don’t want to give up, because what am I going to do? Being homeless? I would rather die here than live homeless. »
What measures are being taken to help the victims?
Exhausted emergency crews worked around the clock to clear roads, restore power and phone service and reach people still stranded by the storm, which killed at least 166 people in six states, including many who were been hit by falling trees or trapped in flooded cars and homes.
Nearly half of the deaths were in North Carolina, while dozens more occurred in South Carolina and Georgia.
PHOTO MARCO BELLO, REUTERS
The hurricane Helene caused damage in Lake Lure, North Carolina, United States, on 1er October 2024.
President Joe Biden, who is expected to assess the damage in North and South Carolina on Wednesday, estimated that recovery could cost billions.
“We need to restart this recovery process,” he said Tuesday. People are scared to death. It’s urgent. »
More than 150,000 households have registered for help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and that number is expected to rise quickly in the coming days, said Frank Matranga, an agency representative.
Nearly 2 million ready-to-eat meals and more than a million liters of water have been sent to the worst-affected areas, he said.
The storm triggered the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina, dumping more than 24 inches of rain in places.
Mr. Cooper said Tuesday that more than two dozen water treatment plants remained closed and not producing water.
Active-duty U.S. military units may be needed to help with long-term recovery, he said, adding that Joe Biden had given “the green light” to mobilize military assets in the near future.
A section of one of the region’s main arteries, Interstate 40, reopened Tuesday after a mudslide cleared, but a collapsed stretch near North Carolina’s border with Tennessee remained closed .
How some of the hardest hit areas are coping
Residents and business owners wore masks and gloves to clean up debris Tuesday in Hot Springs, North Carolina, where nearly every building along the small town’s Main Street was severely damaged.
Sarah Calloway, owner of Vaste Riviere Provisions deli and deli, said the storm came to town with frightening speed. She helped fill sandbags the night before, but they proved useless.
The water rose so quickly that even though she and others were in an apartment on a higher floor, she feared they would not be safe. They called for help from a rapid water team.
“They tried to reach us, but at that point they couldn’t,” she said. Luckily, that’s when the water started to recede. »
“It was really hard to see how fast it was rising and then see entire buildings floating down the river. It was something I can’t even describe,” she said.
More than 150,000 billion liters of rain fell in one week
Over the past week, the hurricane Helene and a regular rainstorm that preceded it drenched the southeastern United States with more than 150 trillion gallons of rain, an unprecedented amount of water that stunned experts.
That’s enough to fill the Dallas Cowboys Stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe once. If focused only on the state of North Carolina, this amount of water would be over a meter deep. That’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
“This is an astronomical amount of precipitation,” said Ed Clark, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. In 25 years of working in the meteorological service, I have never seen a phenomenon of such geographic magnitude and such a volume of water falling from the sky. »
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue, a former NOAA chief scientist, calculated — using precipitation measurements taken in four-kilometer by four-kilometer grids — that more than 150 trillion gallons of rain would fall through Sunday on the Eastern United States, including 75 trillion liters in Georgia, Tennessee, the Carolinas and Florida due to Hurricane Helene.
Mr Clark carried out the calculations independently and said the 150 trillion liter figure is about right, and even conservative. Mr. Maue said that since his calculations, there may have been a few billion additional gallons of rain, much of it in Virginia.
Seth Borenstein, Associated Press