Survivors of tropical hurricane Helene are struggling to rebuild their lives, while the President of the United States, Joe Biden, intends this Wednesday (2) to assess the damage caused by the hurricane’s passage through the southeast of the country, which killed at least 162 people.
After hitting Florida as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday (25), Helene unleashed its fury across much of the southeastern United States, including Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, where flash floods raised the level of streams and rivers, destroyed homes and separated victims from their families.
President Joe Biden is expected to visit North Carolina and South Carolina, including a flyover of Asheville, the county seat of Buncombe County, North Carolina, where at least 57 people have died.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in the midst of a presidential campaign against Republican rival Donald Trump, will visit Georgia and North Carolina, two of the most affected states and among the seven key battleground states of this year’s elections.
On Monday (1st), Trump visited Georgia.
The high-level visits come as federal, state and local officials prepare for what U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said will be a “multibillion-dollar undertaking” that will last years.
Search teams continue searching for wreckage and providing aid to survivors amid destroyed roads and bridges and downed power lines.
In the city of Swannanoa, North Carolina, Jessica Dixon is looking for her father, who she says may have died after being swept away by the current of a creek behind his house.
“My dad went to the back (of the house) to get my mom’s purse, where the keys were,” Dixon said. “Afterwards, all I could hear was Parker (Jessica’s son) saying, ‘Grandpa left. Grandfather left.’ And he was swept away by the water.”
In Clyde, another city in the American state, Matt Hartwiger abandoned his house on the bank of a river on Friday morning (27), when the sirens started to ring. Within hours, water from the Pigeon River reached the second floor of the house.
Hartwiger, his six-months-pregnant wife, their three young children and their pets were among the first to arrive at the city’s Haywood County shelter. The couple passed through several motels until they reached Knoxville, Tennessee, a 100-kilometer trip that took two days due to road closures.
He has since been notified by a church group that they were cleaning mud from his home built in 1900 and had piled the destroyed furniture outside.
He intends to return.
“I don’t know if there will be work. I don’t know if people will have a place to live,” said Hartinger, a restaurant manager.
Some locations in western North Carolina may have experienced a once-in-5,000-year event as conditions were perfect to create maximum precipitation, said Tennessee state climatologist Andrew Joyner.
Before Helene, there was a storm in the Gulf of Mexico that caused saturation in areas like Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the Appalachians, located above hard-hit communities like Swannanoa and Black Mountain. Then, as Helene approached at the perfect angle to tower over the peak, the rain intensified.
“The event was a perfect storm,” Joyner said.
This content was originally published in Hurricane Helene survivors assess damage after the end of the storm on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Bruce Belcher is a seasoned author with over 5 years of experience in world news. He writes for online news websites and provides in-depth analysis on the world stock market. Bruce is known for his insightful perspectives and commitment to keeping the public informed.
