Hurricane Helene left at least 33 people dead and caused widespread flooding across the southeastern United States on Friday, depriving millions of people of power.
According to the criteria of
At least 14 people died in South Carolina, eleven in Georgia, seven in Florida and one in North Carolinaaccording to the most recent balance of local authorities.
Roads, homes and businesses were left under water after Helene made landfall near Tallahassee, the Florida state capital, overnight Thursday and moved northward, although it weakened into a tropical storm.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported “historic and catastrophic flooding” and warned of Sudden rising waters in Atlanta, Georgia’s largest city, as well as South Carolina and North Carolina.
Up to 30 centimeters of rain was forecast in the Appalachian Mountains, and isolated places even received more.
In Perry, a town near the point where Helene hit the coast as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, homes were left without power and the gas station was leveled.
I’m from Florida, so I’m kind of used to it, but at one point it was really scary. It was like my house was going to fly away.
“I’m from Florida, so I’m kind of used to it, but at one point I was really scared. It was like my house was going to blow up,” Larry Bailey, 32, who spent the night sheltering in his home, told AFP. small wooden house with his two nephews and his sister.
The governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, reported eleven fatalities in his state, including a first responder, and warned that The city of Valdosta had identified 115 heavily damaged structures with several people trapped inside.
Authorities in Pinellas County, Florida, confirmed five deaths related to the storm.
Another death was also confirmed in North Carolina, when a tree fell on a house, according to the fire department.
Other hurricanes and storms
Meanwhile, Hurricane Isaac continues to move through the center of the Atlantic without presenting a threat, as does the new storm Joyce.
Joyce, which like Isaac also does not represent threats on land, formed this Friday over the central Atlantic Ocean and is located 2,130 kilometers east of the North Leeward Islands (see map).
Joyce has maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers per hour and a gradual strengthening is expected during this weekend.
Hurricane Isaac, for its part, is heading east-northeast over the central Atlantic Ocean with maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers per hourand with a travel speed of 30 kilometers per hour. The cyclone is about 1,740 kilometers west of the Azores Islands.
There is also Tropical Storm John, which has left at least 16 dead after its slow and erratic advance during the week along the Mexican Pacific coast, making landfall for the second time, now in the state of Michoacán, the National Meteorological Service reported this Friday ( SMN).
The phenomenon, which first entered the country last Monday as a category 3 hurricane in Guerrero, in the south of the country, re-emerged from its remnants on Wednesday, strengthened on Thursday and for the second time arrived as a category 1 hurricane and later dropped to a tropical storm. leaving in its wake extraordinary rains whose floods and landslides have caused 13 deaths in Guerrero and three in Oaxaca.
Added to that panorama, and with Typhoon Yagi hitting Asia, Storm Boris drenching Europe and extreme flooding in the Sahel, So far September has been a very rainy month worldwide.
Scientists link some extreme weather events directly to human-caused global warming, but it is still too early to draw clear conclusions about the current month.
New normal?
“We have to start asking ourselves: Is this the new normal? Is it going to happen every year?” said Curtis Drafton, a 48-year-old search and rescue volunteer in Steinhatchee, Florida.
“There is a lot of talk about a once-in-a-lifetime storm, but last year we had a similar one,” he told AFP.
There’s a lot of talk about a once-in-a-lifetime storm, but last year we had a similar one.
Some Atlanta residents used buckets to pour water out of ground-floor windows.
Tampa and Tallahassee airports closed and more than 3.4 million homes and businesses were without power in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas this Fridayaccording to tracking site PowerOutage.us.
In the impact zone, residents had been warned of a never-before-seen storm surge.
Tampa Bay resident Matt Heller told CNN that his home was under 1.2 meters of water half an hour after the storm hit, while he took shelter in a kayak in his flooded living room.
“This is definitely the biggest flooding we’ve ever had,” he said.
President Joe Biden and state officials had urged people to heed official evacuation warnings before Helene arrived, although some chose to stay in their homes to wait out the storm.
DeSantis mobilized the National Guard and thousands of personnel for possible search and rescue operations and power restoration.
Helene previously hit the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico, where several tourist resorts are located.
#Hurricane #Helene #leaves #dead #historic #catastrophic #flooding #United #States