Hurricane Helene has left officials in five southeastern states grappling to respond to the widespread destruction it caused after hitting Florida as a Category 4 storm last week, as the death toll continues to rise.
The big picture: Officials on Sunday confirmed 30 deaths in the flood-hit Buncombe County, western North Carolina, where Asheville saw historic water level rises — bringing the number of storm-related deaths across six states to at least 91, per AP.
- Officials also confirmed storm-related deaths in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina,
- and Virginia, as search and rescue teams continued to respond to the fallout from the hurricane that struck Florida late Thursday before moving into Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The death toll was expected to rise.
- Widespread outages still affected hundreds of thousands of people in multiple states Monday morning, including North and South Carolina and Georgia.
State of play: Underscoring the widespread threats the former Hurricane Helene posed, the Biden-Harris administration approved emergency requests for federal assistance from Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Alabama ahead of the storm’s landfall.
- FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell told CBS News Sunday that the five states affected by the storm “are going to have very complicated recoveries, but we will continue to bring those resources in to help them, technical assistance as they’re trying to identify the best ways to rebuild.”
- She noted on CBS’ “Face the Nation” there’s “historic flooding” in North Carolina, particularly in the state’s west.
- “I don’t know that anybody could be fully prepared for the amount of flooding and landslides they are having right now,” Criswell said.
- Pamlico County Emergency Management in a Saturday Facebook post described the damage from the remnants of the storm in Chimney Rock, some 41 miles southeast of Asheville, as “unimaginable.”
Zoom in: Criswell joined Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to survey damage in the hurricane-hit state on Tuesday and she was surveying damage in Valdosta, Georgia, on Sunday. She’ll meet with leaders in flood-affected North Carolina communities on Monday.
- President Biden told Criswell when she briefed him on the ongoing impacts in the storm-affected states that he plans to travel this week to affected communities “as soon as it will not disrupt emergency response operations,” per a Sunday evening White House pool report.
- Vice President Kamala Harris also intends to visit impacted communities once this is possible, according to a report from poolers traveling with the Democratic presidential nominee.
- Former President Trump’s presidential campaign announced plans to visit Valdosta on Monday.
By the numbers: Over 764,000 customers were without power in South Carolina and another 583,000 others in Georgia were without electricity on Monday morning, per poweroutage.us.
- Nearly 460,000 in N.C., more than 136,000 in Florida and almost 106,000 in Virginia also had no power, according to the utility tracker.
What we’re watching: The U.S. Postal Service warned in an online alert that Hurricane Helene’s effects “may impact the processing, transportation, and delivery of mail and packages” in Fla., Ga., S.C., N.C., Alabama, Tenn., Kentucky, and Va.
- The USPS on Sunday announced that retail and delivery operations for facilities in several N.C. cities had been “temporarily suspended due to Hurricane Helene impacts.”
Context: The start of mail-in voting in N.C. was already delayed while the state Supreme Court took up a lawsuit by former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
- The N.C. State Board of Elections announced it had begun mailing ballots on Sept. 20 after the court sided with Kennedy and ordered his name be removed from the ballot.
Between the lines: Hurricanes are increasingly likely to become
, and studies show human-caused climate change is a major driver of this.
- Hurricane Helene was part of a growing trend of storms that have undergone rapid intensification. This one was among eight other landfalling storms in the U.S. that rapidly intensified by at least 35 mph in 24 hours before landfall.
- The extreme intensification rate was due in large part to hot ocean surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, along with ocean heat content values. Research shows climate change is boosting global ocean temperatures.
- Criswell noted on CBS that in the past, “when we would look at damage from hurricanes, it was primarily wind damage, with some water damage.”
- Now, “we’re seeing so much more water damage, and I think that is a result of the warm waters, which is a result of climate change.”
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