North Carolina was a “post-apocalyptic” landscape on Monday in the wake of Helene, with hundreds of people still cut off from communications and unaccounted for amid flooded roads and a lack of basic services.
Officials reported more than 100 deaths across a half-dozen states due the powerful storm that was a major hurricane when it slammed into Florida’s Big Bend region late on Thursday before cutting a destructive path through Georgia and into the Carolinas.
As many as 600 people remained unaccounted for, U.S. Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall said at the White House. Flooded roads and toppled cellphone towers isolated devastated communities.
Officials said the death toll was likely to rise even as they clung to hope that emergency responders would find most of those unaccounted for as they reached more locations and emergency mobile telecommunications assets came online.
Lake Lure, around 20 miles southeast of Asheville, was covered with floating debris from homes and businesses washed away by mountain streams that surround the lake, a video posted on X by Charlotte City Councilman Tariq Bokhari showed.
“It’s hard to describe, never seen anything like this, post-apocalyptic,” Bokhari wrote. “It’s so overwhelming. You don’t even know how to fathom what recovery looks like, let alone where to start.”