Storm Helene, which has since weakened to a post-tropical cyclone, has killed at least 55 people across five states as it battered the South with record storm surges and a tornado.
Helene is primarily hovering over Tennessee and Kentucky, though the edges of the storm are lashing parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, per the latest update from the National Hurricane Center.
The center forecasted the storm would spin down ‘today into tomorrow’ across the Tennessee Valley.
And with the heavy rain lessening, the center said it would stop releasing hourly updates about Helene.
But devastating pictures show the horrific damage Helene has caused over the last several days, with the most pressing issue at the moment being an overworked dam in Tennessee.
Pictured: The Nolichucky Dam in Eastern Tennessee. The dam was bursting with 30,000 cubic feet of water per second about a day ago
Initially, authorities weren’t sure the dam would hold
But as of now, the dam is still intact, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority
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The Nolichucky Dam in eastern Tennessee, meant to tame the flow of the Nolichucky River, was seeing more than 30,000 cubic feet per second of water bursting through as of about 22 hours ago, per the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
Based on that figure, an Olympic swimming pool’s worth of water was gushing through the tiny dam every three seconds.
Authorities responded by issuing a flash flood warning for Cocke, Greene, and Hamblen counties, an emergency that was extended until noon eastern time, according to CNN.
Approximately 5,800 residents and two schools were immediately affected by dam getting flooded.
In an update Saturday morning, TVA said the river had crested and that the dam remained intact.
‘Water is currently receding by approximately one foot per hour. Our Dam Safety teams are in the process of assessing the condition of the dam to determine next steps,’ the agency announced. ‘We are estimating water levels reached 8 feet over the record elevation.’
This is what Helene looked like as of the evening of September 27, a day after it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Big Bend Region of Florida
This graphic shows the areas that are more susceptible to flooding this weekend
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The storm, which made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane on Thursday, has been responsible for more than 50 reported deaths in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.
At least 19 are dead in South Carolina, including two firefighters in Saluda County.
George Satcher, 53, and Landon Bodie, who was just 18 years old, were out responding to a call Friday morning and were killed when a tree fell on their fire truck, News19 reported.
‘That’s a reminder that these first responders put their life on the line every day to go out and protect the citizens that they serve,’ said David Jones with the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
In Georgia, officials are saying the death toll has risen to 15, with two people dying after getting swept up in a tornado in Alamo.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said 11 have died so far in his state, including several people who drowned in Pinellas County.
North Carolina reported six more deaths. Among them was a four-year-old girl killed in a car wreck caused by wet roads.
As of Saturday morning, over 400 roads remain closed across the state, according to North Carolina’s Department of Transportation.
In Craig County, Virginia, one person died as a result of a tree falling on top of the structure they were in, according to Governor Glenn Youngkin.
Another person died when high winds sent a chicken coop flying before it landed on her, WDBJ 7 reported.
Meanwhile, many scenes in Florida appear apocalyptic.
Dozens of boats washed up onto the streets of Treasure Island, Florida
Horseshoe Beach, Florida, was a particularly hard hit area, with entire city blocks reduced to rubble
Dozens of homes and businesses were destroyed after Helene made landfall
Survivors Tammy Bryan, left, hugs fellow resident Jennifer Lange amid the destruction in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Horseshoe Beach on Saturday, September 28
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Take Treasure Island for example, a town in the vicinity of Tampa, where dozens of boats have washed up onto its streets.
Treasure Island has an elevation of 3 feet above sea level, which was no match for approximately 7 foot storm surges seen by the Tampa Bay area.
The further up Florida’s west coast you go, the damage gets worse and worse.
Horseshoe Beach, a northern town that was much closer to where Helene touched down, saw houses and businesses reduced to rubble.
Traumatized citizens cried as they saw entire blocks radiated by the storm, leaving nothing but planks of wood and other debris.
Cedar Key, slightly south of Horseshoe Beach, was also hit hard.
Michael Bobbitt, 48, was one of those who decided to stay behind.
‘We’re feeling pretty gut-punched here in Cedar Key. When we were fighting this in the night, however bad we thought it would be, it’s much worse in the light of day.
‘Cedar Key as we know it is completely gone,’ he told The New York Times.
‘Entire houses have been picked up and moved away. We had to go through four feet of water to get to them. The post office is destroyed.’
Matthew Harris leans on the bed of his truck after Hurricane Helene destroyed the house where he had been living in Steinhatchee, Florida
This North Carolina grocery store limits how many packages of water bottles any one customer can buy at a time
The crunch for getting resources to people who need them, like food and water, is still an acute issue in North Carolina.
Certain grocery stores have imposed limits on how much water one customer can buy to prevent shortages.
Governor Roy Cooper called the Helene ‘one of the worst storms in modern history’ for the state.
Cooper said more than 100 people have had to be rescued from high waters. And the particularly hard hit city of Asheville was under a curfew until 7:30 am on Saturday.
Some 3.5 million people across 10 states in the South and Midwest remain without electricity, according to poweroutage.us.
Helene comes a little less than two months after Hurricane Debby made landfall in practically the same region of Florida that Helene did.
Debby was a Category 1, so not nearly as strong, but a preliminary analysis from AccuWeather estimates it caused $28 billion in damage and economic loss.