Helene has torn through the Southeast, killing more than four dozen people, in what a North Carolina county official called the “most significant natural disaster” the region has experienced in recent years.
The Carolinas were hit hard on Friday, with South Carolina reporting more than 1 million power outages as of early Saturday and North Carolina reporting over 700,000 outages, according to poweroutage.us. In total across the Southeast, more than 3.7 million homes and businesses are without power. At least 52 people have been killed from the storm and the destruction Helene brought with it, according to the Associated Press.
The storm made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region on Thursday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with catastrophic 140 mile per hour winds and torrential rain. It had rapidly, within nearly 30 hours, strengthened and transformed from a Category 1 hurricane into a Category 4. The destructive storm made some areas of Florida only reachable by boat.
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