Posted on 10/02/2024 6:28:31 AM PDT by Red Badger
The search for survivors continued Tuesday amid the devastation from Hurricane Helene, which has killed at least 162 people and destroyed homes across the Southeast.
Many people also remain unaccounted for, especially in North Carolina, where hundreds of roads remain inaccessible and communications have been knocked out. At the White House on Monday evening, President Biden told reporters there were reports that 600 people were unaccounted for.
"God willing they're alive, but there's no way to contact them," Mr. Biden said.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said that search and rescue personnel have been deployed to affected areas, and efforts are underway to bring in satellite communications. CBS News previously reported that more than 3,300 personnel from across the federal government have been deployed to support response efforts in the states Helene bore through. The storm is expected to be one of the costliest in U.S. history.
As of Tuesday evening, CBS News has confirmed at least 77 storm-related deaths in North Carolina, 36 in South Carolina, 25 in Georgia, 14 in Florida, eight in Tennessee and two in Virginia.
Hurricane Helene's impact
Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend region on Thursday, with 140 mile per hour winds and 15-foot storm surge in some areas. Parts of the Gulf Coast have been decimated. Officials estimate that 90% of the homes in Keaton Beach, Florida are simply gone, after massive storm surge and strong winds impacted the coastal area.
"It's total devastation, and very heartbreaking, because we were a family," said Becky Jarvis, whose husband built their home there 40 years ago. Now, it's in pieces. "It's very sad."
After the storm hit Florida, it blew north through Georgia. Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it "looks like a bomb went off," with splintered homes and debris-covered highways visible from the air.
The storm then brought torrential rain to the Carolinas and Tennessee, straining dams and overflowing waterways. In rural North Carolina, the area of Busick was recorded as receiving over 31 inches of rain in just two days.
"This is an unprecedented tragedy that requires an unprecedented response," North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said at a news conference Sunday.
Cooper added that more deaths were expected as rescuers reach isolated areas.
Search and rescue operations ongoing amid devastation
In the small town of Burnsville, North Carolina, CBS News watched as a National Guard chopper crew rescued a stranded woman, the first of seven people rescued by the crew Tuesday.
Nearly 60 miles south, in Hendersonville, National Guard troops were sent on another mission, where they located three survivors clearly relieved and grateful to see the helicopter land.
"Grateful to be alive, grateful that everyone is safe, and trusting that everyone will make it through this," a woman who was rescued told CBS News.
The North Carolina National Guard is also delivering food and water to people who have waited days for relief.
"We're working together to open more major routes to push supplies forward while repairing roads, utilities and communications," Cooper said Tuesday.
Criswell said that it remains "very much an active search and rescue mission" in Western North Carolina.
"We know that there's many communities that are cut off just because of the geography" of the mountains in the region, she said Sunday.
Emergency Services Assistant Director Ryan Cole said the flooding in Buncombe County, which contains the city of Asheville, was "biblical."
"We've had biblical flooding here and it has been extremely significant," Cole told the Citizen-Times.
County manager Avril Pinder told the local publication that the storm "is looking to be Buncombe County's own Hurricane Katrina."
In Swannanoa, North Carolina, more than 380,000 people are without power and the lack of cell phone service in the area has left many cut off from the outside world. During the peak of flooding, waters reached as high as the rooftops of many homes.
"This is devastation, devastation, the worst I've ever seen, and I'm 80 years old," Pat Harris, who has lived in the small town for over six decades, told "CBS Mornings" on Tuesday.
Food, water and other essential supplies have been delivered to the community by air, since highways and streets are impassable. North Carolina's Department of Transportation said all roads in the western part of the state should be considered closed to non-emergency travel.
The media is mostly ignoring this story... Apparently George Bush’s response to Katrina was pure evil, while Kamala’s response to Helene has been heartwarming... Even though the death toll keeps rising.
The greatest power of the media is the power to ignore.
They don’t want to show the incompetence and the stupidity of Biden and Harris. This would blast them out of the race for a generation.............
If they can’t spin it, they spike it.
Some useful info available at the local level...
https://www.wral.com/news/state/road-closures-western-nc-helene-2024/
The amount of damage to infrastructure, in addition to everything else, is incredible...
Kamala is utterly stupid, but I have never seen such blatant incompetence in responding to catastrophes as this administration. They could at least pretend, but they don’t even do THAT.
Let someone else do the job. I know for a fact there are people with children trying to leave Asheville.
Seems to me that this would be a good opportunity for sending in a BUNCH OF DRONES. A DRONE could fly in to places which are still INACCESSIBLE to vehicles or on foot or even Helicopters. The video from a drone could help determine if someone is in a location and needs rescue. So we lose a few drones. Whatever they cost, it’s much less than anything else, and much safer.
Military drones would be great for that!
They have the range and can transmit video and location in real time and can loiter for hours!.................
The MSM is pretending for them............
“I know for a fact there are people with children trying to leave Asheville.”
The saddest thing was on Twitter.
A first responder said in one valley there were naked kids wandering around asking if anyone had seen their parents.
(My guess is all their clothes were soaked and it’s rather cool in the mountains. Their parents are probably gone.)
Horrific.
Maybe they sent the majority of our drones to Ukraine like they did our transformers :-(
This is purposeful neglect. TRAITORS!!
Pics, at link ...
Dan Caldwell 🇺🇸
@dandcaldwell
We do not have this equipment readily available because we have shipped large quantities of transformers and other electrical equipment to Ukraine. Both our military and non-military support for Ukraine has left us less prepared for domestic disasters like Hurricane Helene:
https://x.com/dandcaldwell/status/1841068249716322744
Kamala is not stupid. Don’t be fooled by her act. She has never really been required to use her mind to accomplish anything. Everything has been ‘given’ to her, all her life. Therefore, she doesn’t bother to apply herself to tasks like STUDYING, RESEARCHING, LEARNING. She just pushes the hard work off on everyone else. She generates ‘word salad’ in response to questions because she is uninvolved in the activities mentally. She maintains only the merest grasp of the important situations because she just doesn’t care. Those things are ‘below her’. For example: being the border-czar. She couldn’t be bothered to actually go there and see what was happening. That’s hard work and she has ‘people’ who do that stuff for her. People that she treats like they were slaves.
They are all reserved for the Ukraine - probably.
I can’t imagine that level of anguish.
The Biden/Harris administration has been a disaster of biblical proportions!....................
You put a lot of effort into saying how stupid she is after saying she is not.
1 cubic yard, 3’x3’x3’ weighs 764.55 kg (1,684 pounds).
Now, multiply that by a million or two or three or ten. Then add that to the kinetic force of it moving at 40+ miles per hour down the valleys.
Nothing can withstand that kind of force. Even mighty mountains will eventually crumble in it’s wake.
A truly humbling epiphany. I witnessed the destruction of Hurricane Michael in 2018, the last Cat 5 to make landfall, at Mexico Beach, Tyndall AFB and Panama City Florida.
In some places, nothing was left but a concrete slab where houses and business were....................
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