Hurricane Helene landed as a catastrophic category 4 hurricane on the Gulf Coast of Florida and some parts of Georgia the previous week. The hurricane then flared more havoc in parts of North Carolina during the weekend and it left one of the worst destruction records in the recent past. It knocked out communications, mobile service, and power, leaving millions stranded, and caused many roads to be washed out and landslides.
Altogether, ninety persons have been killed by Helene in the Southeast region, and other states, namely Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia, also suffered the impact of the storm. North Carolina received highly intense precipitation, through which deadly landslides emerged and formed a crisis situation. Several regions have been communicating totally shut out from support with concerns that cell services were down, leaving residents unable to call emergency lines such as 911. In response, officials in Buncombe County have requested portable cell towers to help restore the connection.
Dead trees and branches added to the destruction, and more than four hundred roads were closed in North Carolina. Lack of fuel at the filling stations has compounded the problems, and hence, the authorities say that no road is open for driving except for the rescue car.
After that, responders deployed from other states and the federal government to look for and recover people impacted by the event. North Carolina officials aerial-dropped food supplies to cut-off areas and attempted to fix busted pipelines over the weekend. A hurricane slammed Florida’s Big Bend area as the strongest storm that area has ever witnessed, with sustained winds of 140km per hour.
A number of townships came under the Hurricane’s fury, with Cedar Key, a tad town located in the Gulf of Mexico, suffering the fate of every other community town, with a local, Michael Bobbit, pointing out that ‘‘ It is gone’’, an assertion that brought out the extent of damage caused by the Hurricane Helene.
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