Hurricane Helene's death toll reached 200 on Thursday and could rise higher still, as searchers made their way toward the hardest to reach places in the mountains of western North Carolina.
Officials in Georgia and North Carolina added to their states' grim tallies, padding an overall count that has already made Helene the deadliest storm to hit the US mainland since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
A week after the storm came ashore in Florida before carving a path of destruction through the Southeast, connections between friends, neighbors and even strangers have provided hope in the worst-affected areas.
Government cargo planes brought food and water to these areas and rescue crews waded through creeks searching for survivors, The Associated Press reported.
Helping one another in remote mountain areas, helicopters hoisted the stranded to safety while search crews moved toppled trees so they could look door to door for survivors. In some places, homes teetered on hillsides and washed-out riverbanks.
Electricity is being slowly restored, as the number of homes and businesses without power dipped below 1 million for the first time since last weekend, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages are in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene struck after barreling over Florida’s Gulf Coast on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane. Deaths have been reported in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia, in addition to the Carolinas.
