Breathtaking footage captured the moment severe flooding caused by Hurricane Helene ripped through a Tennessee man’s home.
The homeowner, Jeffrey Fuller, live-streamed the hurricane tearing through his property on Facebook.
The video showed waist-high waters barreling through the home, with Fuller shouting over the rushing current that the storm ‘came in quick… we’re going into the attic.’
It comes as the death toll from Hurricane Helene rose to at least 55 on Saturday, after the weather system left a trail of destruction stretching from Florida to the Carolinas.
In Tennessee where Fuller’s footage was filmed, torrential rainfall brought by Helene caused the Nolichucky Dam to burst.
Stunning images of the dam failing showed it bursting with over 30,000 cubic feet of water per second – the equivalent of an Olympic swimming pools worth of water gushing through the tiny dam every three seconds.
Although Tennessee avoided some of the worst wind gusts that tore apart Florida and Georgia, Helene slowed over the state and lashed it with heavy rainfall.
As Helene continues to slow, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecasted on Saturday that the storm would spin down ‘today into tomorrow’ over the Tennessee Valley.
The NHC marked the winding down of the natural disaster on Saturday as it announced it would stop releasing hourly updates about Helene, which it had done so since the hurricane made landfall on Thursday.
As of Saturday morning, Hurricane Helene was responsible for at least 55 reported deaths in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.
In South Carolina, where a total of 19 people lost their lives in the storm, two firefighters were among the dead.
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.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced at least 11 had died in the Sunshine State, including several drownings in coastal Pinellas County.
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, while North Carolina reported six more deaths. Among them was a four-year-old girl killed in a car wreck caused by the storm.
Hurricane Helene made landfall in darkness on Thursday evening, leaving millions of Americans to wake up Friday morning to widespread destruction.
The Big Bend region of Florida was among the worst hit, with images of the aftermath appearing apocalyptic.
Further destruction was seen on Treasure Island near Tampa, where dozens of mangled boats washed up onto the 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.
Horseshoe Beach, a northern town that was much closer to where Helene touched down, saw houses and businesses reduced to rubble.
Despite urgent calls from officials to evacuate in the days and hours before, some residents remained in the storm’s path – with traumatized citizens seen crying as they saw entire blocks radiated by the storm, leaving nothing but planks of wood and other debris.
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.’