Hurricane Helene devastates the Southeastern Seaboard — Ravages the Carolinas, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida

Hurricane Helene nearing landfall in Perry Florida - Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

(Southeastern United States) — Hurricane Helene made its way through North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia over the past few days, devastating the Southeastern Region and plunging entire towns underwater. North Carolina especially got hit hard, with entire counties losing power (including my own at the time of writing this), the collapse of several segments of I-40, the flooding of Asheville, and the stranding of several hundred North Carolinians due to Helene. 

At the time of writing, there is no definitive death toll. As far as we know, a confirmed 89 people have been killed. CNN reports that 36 are confirmed dead in North Carolina, 24 in South Carolina, 17 in Georgia, 11 in Florida, and 1 in Virginia. 

 On September 27th, the Duke Energy company reported 1.2 million outages on their Duke Energy Carolinas grid, as well as a few more on the Duke Energy Progress grid. There are currently 1.3 million South Carolinians without power as of September 29th. Florida has reported power outages for 186,000 customers, which is a lot, but is towered over by the record high numbers in the Carolinas this weekend.

The storm ravaged Florida’s big bend, leveling entire neighborhoods and causing homes to cease existence. Asheville, North Carolina, is currently entirely secluded from the outside world and is nearly entirely flooded. Entire towns have been washed away across the Southeast. There have been dozens of  thousands of missing persons reports filed in these areas, including Buncombe County, North Carolina, which has seen over 600 missing persons reports filed in the past 24 hours.

The I-40 interstate highway, running from California to North Carolina’s coast, has closed down several sections across the TN-NC border, citing the collapse of several lengths of road in the mountains. With sections of I-40 washed out, another question comes to mind — Does anyone really want to use back roads to get from Sevierville to Virginia? Pretty much no one, but they might not be able to. The Department of Transportation reports over 300 closed roads in North Carolina, as well as 150 in South Carolina. Governor Cooper has gone so far as to state that their priority is getting people out and getting supplies in, but that “Everything is flooded. It is very difficult for them to see exactly what the problems are”, which will definitely be a major obstacle to leap over for the North Carolina government.

With the disaster of Hurricane Helene, the Southeast faces a challenge. In the words of one Twitter user: “[I] need people to understand that for people in Appalachia, this wasn’t improbable. It was unimaginable. It was unthinkable. Never in my life have we been affected by a hurricane like this. We used to flee TO the upstate when hurricanes hit Charleston. I remember friends fleeing TO Atlanta. TO Asheville. TO Greenville. TO Sevierville.”

Something like this has not happened to the region of Appalachia in quite a while. As entire lives wash away before our very eyes, a new chapter has been marked in the history books of the South and of Middle America at large. Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee will take a long time to recover after this tragedy, and at worst, we here in Ol’ Caroline will never be the same.