The official death toll from Hurricane Helene rose to at least 200 on Thursday, making the storm the deadliest to strike the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The hardest hit areas included western North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Georgia, where 1.1 million people still didn’t have power on Thursday, one week after Helene made landfall as a Category 4 storm on the Gulf Coast of Florida.
Entire mountain towns were cut off in the western Carolinas, where people were going door-to-door to check on neighbors due to the lack of electricity and cellphone reception.
In Buncombe County, N.C., which includes the devastated city of Asheville, 61 deaths were reported as of Thursday morning. However, authorities still didn’t have a good guess at how many people remained missing in the area.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris saw the devastation firsthand on Wednesday. The president flew over western North Carolina in a helicopter before delivering a speech in Raleigh.
“Our job is to help as many people as we can as quickly as we can and as thoroughly as we can,” he said. “We’re not leaving until you’re back on your feet completely.”
The federal government is expected to cover repair and rebuilding costs throughout the region. Harris made similar promises Wednesday in Georgia.
Additionally on Thursday, labor authorities announced an investigation into how multiple people were killed at an Impact Plastics factory in Erwin. Multiple workers said they were told to keep working even as the storm approached. Eventually, the plant lost power and 11 people were swept away. As of Thursday, only five were confirmed rescued.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is expected to continue rising once authorities gain access to mountainous areas that have been cut off from the outside world. Since Katrina killed more than 1,300 people in 2005, no storm to strike the mainland U.S. has killed more than 200 people.
However, Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, killing an estimated 3,000 people throughout the Caribbean.
With News Wire Services
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