Tuesday, October 8, 2024, 9:06 p.m.
Firefighters found John Savage’s grandparents hugging in bed at their home in South Carolina. They resigned themselves to letting the storm ‘Helene’ decide whether they lived or died. It was the second thing in a night of absolute terror. Dark, after the power lines fell, and loud, between walls that creaked due to the hurricane winds, the gusts of rain and the onslaught against the walls of avalanches of brown water that came down from the slopes. A tree fell on their home on Beech Island and crushed the couple’s bedroom.
The meteorological catastrophe that shakes the United States is summed up in an unprecedented reality: while rescuers search for people still missing since last week as a result of the passage of ‘Helene’ through the two Carolinas and Georgia, a force four hurricane, ‘Milton’ , will hit the Florida coast between Wednesday night and early Thursday morning with the apparent promise of behaving even more cruelly.
The number of deaths in the previous storm officially rises to 215 people, but those missing are still in the many dozens. The authorities take it for granted that there are anonymous bodies buried in the mud or displaced kilometers away under the pressure of the torrents. But the main assumption is that the majority of those absent are residents of remote and forested areas who remain cut off, without electricity or telephones. Thousands of volunteers try to reach them on foot, on horseback or even in canoes, taking advantage of the streams because all the roads are broken or have been swallowed by mud and rocks.
A very prized object among the patrols is the chainsaw; the only way to advance through the tangle of fallen trunks and branches everywhere. There is a clear urgency to go to lost houses and cabins where it is known that there is no drinking water or where someone lives who requires daily medication. The hope lies in the fact that “they are mountain people, they are tough,” Junior Seatz, head of the Creston Volunteer Fire Department, a town where large natural areas abound, tells ‘Los Angeles Times’. Seatz checks the rescue equipment and talks to the volunteers who continually sign up for searches. What does it say to bring a group of them? «Chainsaws, gasoline, off-road trucks. And good backs.
Nobody thinks about the vote
Exciting stories unfold in the two states mired in mud. There are the families who have armed themselves with bicycles and chainsaws to try to reach their loved ones’ homes. «I spoke with my mother half an hour before. She lives alone in the mountains. She told me she was prepared for whatever came. We have come across some people who have told us that they are alive and well,” says Susan Reibuth. «We know these are difficult times, but know that we are getting there. “We are going to pick up our people,” Quentin Miller, Chief of the Buncombe County Police, exhorted in a press conference.
North Carolina and Georgia are two key states in the upcoming presidential elections on November 5. No one ventures at the moment whether ‘Helene’ will influence the results. Nor is anyone thinking about the elections, no matter how much the two candidates, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, have visited the devastated areas five times.
What is important now are the homes and businesses destroyed by the storm and the mourning for lost neighbors. “It doesn’t matter what party you are, we all need help,” explains Nancy Crawford, a Republican who will vote for Harris because she is deeply irritated by Trump’s statements on immigration.
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