Hurricane Helene’s leftovers caused havoc across the Southeast on Friday after making landfall as a deadly Category 4 hurricane in Florida’s Big Bend the night before. Helene was blamed for dozens of deaths across numerous states after causing historic and catastrophic floods, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Despite degrading to a post-tropical cyclone, it continued to cause “catastrophic, historic” flooding in the southern Appalachians late Friday night, according to the hurricane center.
Floodwaters in Tennessee caused dozens of hospital patients to rush to the roof for refuge. Unicoi County Hospital was “engulfed by extremely dangerous and rapidly moving water,” according to Ballad Health on social media. Ballad Health reported that the hospital’s personnel and patients had been rescued by late Friday afternoon.
Helene is believed to have caused at least 45 deaths. A spokeswoman for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp stated that 15 people were slain in the state. Kemp confirmed on Friday that a first responder was among the fatalities.
The storm killed 19 people in South Carolina, officials confirmed to CBS News. Two firefighters and two persons died when trees fell on their homes. In Florida, the Pinellas County administrator verified five deaths to CBS News.
Gov. Ron DeSantis also told reporters that at least one person was murdered in the Tampa region when a traffic sign fell on a vehicle, and Tampa police verified that a woman in her late 70s was discovered dead in her home when water entered the house. DeSantis told reporters that another individual died in Dixie County after a tree fell on a home.
Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina announced that two persons have died in his state. Cooper reported that one person died in a collision on a flooded road. Another individual died after a tree toppled on a house, according to the Mecklenburg Emergency Medical Services Agency. Another person involved in the event was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia announced at a Friday news conference that one person was killed.
Helene was situated about 115 miles northeast of Paducah, Kentucky, and moving southwest at 8 mph, according to the Miami Hurricane Center. It was expected to stall over the Tennessee Valley throughout the weekend.
According to the hurricane center, Helene made landfall about 10 miles west of Perry, Florida, on Thursday at 11:10 p.m. EDT, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph.
Meteorologist Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel noted on “CBS Mornings” Friday that Helene is the fourth hurricane to make landfall on the Gulf Coast this year, which has only happened five times before.
Helene is the third hurricane to strike the Big Bend region in the past 13 months. In 2023, Hurricane Idalia, a Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph, caused a record-breaking storm surge from Tampa to the Big Bend. Last August, Hurricane Debby also made landfall in the area.
“The early reports we’ve received show that the damage in those counties that were really in the eye of the storm has exceeded the damage in Idalia and Debby combined,” DeSantis told reporters at a news conference Friday.
A Coast Guard team staged a daring rescue off Florida’s Sanibel Island, freeing a man and his dog who had become stuck on his 36-foot yacht. “We have a lot of damage throughout the state, water mostly on the west coast and the peninsula,” she said.
Storm-weary locals in the Big Bend fishing community of Steinhatchee hoped Helene would miss them, but the waterside piers and eateries that previously were are no longer there.
The storm surge pushed structures off their foundations. Linda Wicker lost the business she’d operated for 20 years. She seems more shocked by what she saw in her hamlet, homes ripped apart by the storm and the deep water.
“If you let it play with your mind, you just can’t go there,” Wicker told me. “You cannot. “It’s horrible.”
Wicker and her family are already considering how to restore what Helene wiped away.
“There’s a lot of folks that don’t have a place to go, have nothing, no money, no home, no nothing, so we got to work to help them too,” Wicker pointed out.
Streets on Tampa’s famous Davis Islands were submerged, and boats had washed ashore. One home was destroyed by fire. Marie Terry, who lives next door, would have remained in the area unless her daughter urged her to go.
“I’m just in shock,” Terry told CBS News. “It’s just such a beautiful house, and to see it like this, it’s like, what could have happened?”
Daylight revealed scenes of terrible devastation along Florida’s Gulf Coast, including a massive tree crashing into an apartment building in Tallahassee and boats in front yards on Treasure Island.
More than 3.8 million consumers in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia lost power late Friday night, according to utility tracker Find Energy.
DeSantis stated that emergency crews completed thousands of rescue missions overnight.