Hurricane Helen’s death toll rises to 182 – number expected to rise hundreds of people are missing For.
The staggering count – which makes Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 at 1,392 – covers six states across the South.
North Carolina – one of the hardest hit by severe flooding that swept away entire communities – claimed 91 lives. South Carolina has reported 36 deaths; Georgia has 25; Florida has lost 19; Tennessee has lost 9; And by the numbers, Virginia has lost two collated by CNN,
The dead included many first responders and civil servants who remained at their posts despite the dangers of the storm.
South Carolina firefighters Chad Satcher, 53, and Landon Boddy, 18, died Friday when a tree fell on their engine while responding to a fire in the small town of Saluda.
Sheriff’s Capt. Michelle Quintero, who ran Florida’s Madison County jail in the direct path of the storm, died Sunday when a levee broke and she was swept away by floodwaters. Quintero was driving to Helen’s prison to take care of the inmates when the tragedy struck.
North Carolina Deputy Jim Lau was swept away by flood waters while he was taking a lunch break while on duty as a courthouse security officer in Macon County.
Vernon Davis, a 30-year-old firefighter, was killed Friday in Blackshear when a tree fell on his truck as he was helping clear roads. According to First Coast News,
And in East Tennessee, a police K-9 named Scotty was snatched by flash flood waters and lost.
However, hundreds of people are still missing, suggesting the death toll will continue to rise.
In Buncombe County, North Carolina alone, at least 600 people were considered missing as of Tuesday, with much of the mountainous region still cut off from the outside world – both physically by now-vanished roads and bridges, and by large Communication was almost impossible due to the scale of power outages. ,
“There are reports that more than 600 people are missing because they cannot be contacted,” President Biden said Monday. “God willing, they are alive.”
Throughout the South – especially in the Appalachian regions of Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina – the situation is nearly identical.
Even after bodies stop being recovered from the debris, the storm’s death toll may continue to rise in the coming years – even into the thousands, according to one study.
According to one study, powerful storms like Hurricane Helene could kill 7,000 to 11,000 people over the next 15 years. Study published in Nature On Wednesday.
The study looked at mortality rates after 501 tropical cyclones between 1930 and 1950, and found that income loss and health problems resulting directly from the storms caused “unreported mortality rates” that occurred on the U.S. Atlantic coast. There has been an increase of 5.1% in all deaths. ,
Apart from Katrina, Helen’s death toll has no parallel among hurricanes in more than half a century. The only hurricane to take more lives in that time was Hurricane Camille in 1969, which killed 256 people.
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