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The death toll in the US from Hurricane Helene has risen to more than 225, with many more unaccounted for, as communities across six states reel from its effects including several hundred thousand homes left without power and short of clean water.
The federal government has deployed soldiers and military helicopters to help emergency workers reach people stranded in remote towns unaccustomed to such brutal conditions. Flooding destroyed highways and torrential rain unleashed mudslides on people’s homes.
The toll was highest in North Carolina, where almost 100 fatalities were estimated, followed by South Carolina. The southern states of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia were also badly affected.
Scientists have found that warming sea temperatures are linked to more intense hurricanes. A preliminary study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California found that climate change may have boosted the amount of rainfall over parts of Georgia and North Carolina by as much as 50 per cent as the hurricane dumped moisture collected over the Gulf of Mexico where record temperatures have been reached.
Vice-president Kamala Harris travelled to North Carolina on Saturday, a key election battleground state. The Democratic presidential nominee had already been to Georgia during the week, where she helped to distribute meals and spoke with families in Augusta.
President Joe Biden, too, has travelled to areas hard-hit by the storm, and said he may ask Congress to return from a planned recess to pass a bill that would send more federal funds to affected areas. Former president Trump also toured areas affected by the hurricane, and criticised the federal response.
The crisis come just weeks before November’s US presidential election, at a time when millions of voters are already casting early ballots, either in-person or by mail. Election experts have warned that the destruction in North Carolina could lead to a significant disruption to voting there.
Vice-president Kamala Harris, in the middle of a presidential campaign against Republican former president Donald Trump, travelled to Georgia © Carolyn Kaster/AP
While much of North Carolina is still focused on locating missing people, securing drinking water and clearing debris from crushed homes and cars, analysts warned that disruption could have broader economic implications.
Estimates of the damage varied wildly, as authorities in the worst hit areas were too swamped by rescue and recovery efforts to assemble reliable information.
Moody’s Analytics put the economic cost at up to $34bn, with property damage a significant component at up to $26bn and the remainder due to business disruption.
It did not put a figure on insured losses, but a report from Panmure Liberum put estimates at up to $9bn. Insured losses would have to be more than $10bn for a “spillover” into the reinsurance market, it said.
At the upper end of the range, AccuWeather, a weather forecasting service, estimated that losses from the damage to highways, bridges and railway tracks and from business disruption could amount to $250bn.
President Biden ordered 1,000 soldiers to go to devastated regions earlier this week, to assist with delivery of food, water and other aid.
The troops joined 6,000 National Guard members and more than 4,800 federal workers spread across the affected states, including 1,200 emergency workers in North Carolina.
Search-and-rescue efforts continue across western North Carolina © Marco Bello/Reuters
The defence department also said this week that it had activated 22 helicopters and dozens of high-water vehicles to aid rescue efforts, while the Army Corps of Engineers was supporting debris removal, wastewater management and bridge inspections.
About 400,000 homes across Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina were still without power on Sunday afternoon, according to the tracking site PowerOutage.us.
Even the US National Centers for Environmental Information facility located in Asheville in North Carolina, which collects oceanic, atmospheric and geophysical data dating back to the 1700s, was knocked out.
Flash flooding and landslides in western North Carolina have isolated many people © Jonathan Drake/Reuters
The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had provided 50 Starlink satellite systems to bolster communications services after internet and mobile networks failed across the affected regions.
Grassroots groups in western North Carolina were organising through social media to disperse food, water and petrol to rural communities that became isolated after mudslides and raging rivers destroyed roads.
The storm inundated the western part of North Carolina with catastrophic flooding © Jonathan Drake/Reuters
Helene is the eighth Atlantic hurricane of category four or five strength to make landfall in the US in the past eight years.
It so far ranks as the most deadly named storm to hit the mainland US since Katrina in 2005, though that hurricane claimed a much higher toll estimated at 1,400 in a 2023 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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