In Blackshear, Georgia, a dedicated firefighter died while trying to protect others from Hurricane Helene. In Catawba County, North Carolina, a 4-year-old who lit up every room she walked into was killed in a head-on car crash on a rainy road. And in Charlotte, North Carolina, a tree fell on a home, killing a resident.
Hurricane Helene’s victims were still being counted Friday afternoon. But after it slammed into the Southeast overnight as a Category 4 storm, officials said it had killed more than three dozen people in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas.
In Georgia, Vernon Leon Davis and other firefighters had been setting up barricades in an area where a live power line had fallen, Blackshear Police Chief Christopher Wright said in an interview, citing a preliminary investigation. After Davis got into his pickup truck, the storm started to worsen and a tree landed on top of his truck, killing him early Friday morning, Wright said…