Storm Helene death toll hits 47

Authorities across a wide swath of the southeastern United States yesterday faced the daunting task of cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, one of the most powerful to hit the country, as the death toll continued to rise.
At least 47 deaths were reported by early yesterday, and officials feared still more bodies would be discovered across several states.
Helene was downgraded late on Friday to a post-tropical cyclone.
In Florida’s Pinellas County near Tampa, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he had never seen destruction like what was wrought by Helene. “I would just describe it, having spent the last few hours out there, as a war zone,” Gualtieri told a press conference.
At least 3.25 million customers woke up early yesterday without power across five states, with authorities warning it could be several days before services were fully restored. The worst outages were in South Carolina with more than 1 million homes and businesses without power, and Georgia with 777,000 without power.
Some of the worst rains hit western North Carolina, which saw almost 30 inches (76 cm) of precipitation fall on Mount Mitchell in Yancey County, the NWS’s Weather Prediction Center reported.
Atlanta was hit with 13 inches of rain, and in South Georgia farmers were assessing the damages to the state’s $1 billion cotton crop now in its harvest season.
Before moving north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida’s Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday night, packing 225 kph winds. It left behind a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbors, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.