Pensacola, North Carolina – Rescuers and volunteers facing obstacles around every turn in the remote North Carolina mountains paddled canoes across swollen rivers and led horses through mudslides in the race to reach the stranded. or missing due to the passage of Hurricane Helene, which killed more than 200 people throughout the southeast.
Now, a week after the storm first hit Florida’s Gulf Coast, the search continues for people still unaccounted for in places where phone service and power were lost. Pleas for help came from people who were running out of medicine or who needed fuel for their generators.
It is unclear how many people are missing or unaccounted for. The death toll rose to 215 people on Thursday as more victims were found, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005. About half of the victims were were in North Carolina, while dozens more died in South Carolina and Georgia.
Every path presents a new challenge
Along the Cane River in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, rescuers from the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department picked their way through trees at the top of a valley nearly a week after a wall of water milk chocolate color will devastate for hours.
Pensacola, which is just a few miles from Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi River, lost an untold number of people, said Mark Harrison, the department’s medical director.
“We are starting to make the recovery,” he said Thursday. “We have brought out the most critical people.”
Harrison was helping send volunteers driving all-terrain vehicles on supply trips to people still on the mountaintops.
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