Hurricane center warns of ‘historic and catastrophic flooding’ as Tropical Storm Helene barrels into North Carolina – live | Hurricane Helene

The sheriff of Florida’s Pinellas county, Bob Gualtieri, said at least five people were killed in separate locations at the height of the storm. He said a storm surge of more than 8ft left parts of the county looking like “a war zone”.

“Not everybody evacuated, and unfortunately, they called for help, and we couldn’t help a lot of the people who called as those conditions got very bad last night, and it was inaccessible,” he told reporters at a morning briefing, reported by CNN.

“We tried to launch boats, we tried to use high water vehicles, and we just got with too many obstacles, and we couldn’t get out there and effect some of those rescues.”

At least two of the deaths were drownings, Gualtieri said, but all five were attributable to the storm. He said it was possible the county’s death toll would rise as deputies went house to house.

“I can’t think of a time ever that Pinellas county has experienced the surge that we experienced last night and into the early morning,” he said.

We’ve just heard an update from Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s governor, about the ongoing impact of Tropical Storm Helene. He says the storm is “one of the worst in modern history”.

Two people are confirmed dead in his state, he said in a video briefing to reporters. Heavy rain, flash flooding and downed trees blocking roads continue to hamper rescue and recovery efforts, while almost 900,000 customers in the state are without power:

This is one of the worst storms in modern history for parts of western North Carolina. The end of the rain is not the end of the threat. This fierce storm will move out of our state in the next 24 hours, but the danger will not be over.

Tropical storm force winds that border on hurricane strength are happening right now. Across western North Carolina, trees are falling, causing widespread power outages.

Our hearts are heavy as we report two deaths, one in Catawba County due to a motor vehicle collision on a flooded roadway, and one in Charlotte due to a tree falling on home. There will be more.

Jane Castor, the mayor of Tampa, Florida, took a helicopter ride with the city’s police department at first light Friday to evaluate the flooding and damage caused by Hurricane Helene’s historic storm surge that inundated parts of Tampa Bay.

“We’re seeing extensive damage on Davis Islands and waterfront areas. The National Guard has activated to help with rescue efforts,” Castor wrote in a tweet.

The center of what is now Tropical Storm Helene passed into North Carolina on Friday morning as forecasters warned of continuing “historic, catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding” across the south-eastern US.

In its 11am ET advisory, the National Hurricane Center said the storm’s maximum sustained windspeed had weakened to 45mph, far below the 140mph category 4 monster than slammed into Florida’s big bend area on Thursday night.

But they said Helene still posed a significant danger as its forward speed slowed and it dumped almost unprecedented amounts of rain over a wide area.

“Widespread significant river flooding is ongoing, some of which will be major to record breaking,” John Cangialosi, the NHC’s senior hurricane specialist, said.

“Damaging wind gusts will continue over portions of Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky today, particularly over the higher terrain of the southern Appalachians.

“The expected slow motion could result in significant flooding over the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, and over the southern Appalachians through the weekend.”

Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, has urged residents to stay home as rescue crews continue operations to reach those stranded by rising floodwaters.

First responders had conducted dozens of rescues and plucked at least 25 people to safety, many from rooftops, he said. A flash flood warning is still in effect for the city.

The Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, has just been on Fox News to reinforce the message:

We still have people trapped in homes that we’re trying to cut our way into. We have a lot of resources on the ground already, we’re calling up additional National Guard, and we’re going to throw everything we got at it.

Kemp said metro Atlanta appeared to have been spared significant wind damage. Several hospitals in southern Georgia were without power after Hurricane Helene knocked out backup generators, he said.

A Georgia resident has spoken of her terror as a giant oak tree crashed through her home at the height of the storm.

Rhonda Bell and her husband spent a sleepless night in the downstairs bedroom of their century-old home just outside Valdosta, Georgia, the Associated Press reported.

The winds broke off tree limbs, tore away neighbors’ roof shingles and knocked down fence panels in the neighborhood with train tracks along one edge. Then an oak tree smashed through the roof of an upstairs bedroom and collapsed onto the living room below.

“I just felt the whole house shake,” Bell said. “Thank God we’re both alive to tell about it.”

Here is a selection of images sent to us over the news wires of the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene’s deadly rampage across south-eastern US:

Nasa says a crew of astronauts is set to launch from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Saturday after engineers determined Hurricane Helene had caused no show-stopping damage.

Like many parts of Florida, the Cape Canaveral facility was lashed by tropical storm force winds on Thursday and overnight as Helene made its way north.

Normal operations at KSC resumed Friday, and launch of Crew 9 to the International Space Station, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is set for no earlier than 1.17pm Saturday, the space agency said in a tweet.

The number of customers without power in the south-eastern US had risen to 4.2m by 9am ET, according to poweroutage.us.

Almost 1.4m of those are in South Carolina, with Florida and Georgia also each topping one million, the site reported. Elsewhere, large areas of North Carolina, and some parts of Tennessee, are out.

Rescue crews in Florida performed “thousands of missions” and “saved a lot of lives” overnight, Ron DeSantis just told a media briefing:

As soon as it was safe to do, and even in many cases [when it] probably wasn’t perfectly safe, search and rescue operations were conducted to help people in distress and transport them to safety.

These missions continue, but we’ve had thousands of missions successfully completed in the overnight hours throughout the state. This is our local first responders in conjunction with state assets, and state assets directly going in and effectuating rescues, that’s the National Guard, that’s Florida Fish and Wildlife.

The Florida governor said that despite “a really historic storm surge” in many areas, including Tampa Bay, he was not aware of any fatalities from rising water:

They’re going to be doing broader search and rescue in those areas that did get hit, and see if there’s any other problems, or if there’s any folks that are still left behind. But as of now, we don’t have reports of that, and so those missions were successful, and those missions saved a lot of lives.

The governor said a second reported Florida death from Helene came in Dixie county when a tree fell on a house. Another person was killed in a traffic incident on Thursday night, he said.

Numbers of those killed by Hurricane Helene’s rampage through the south-eastern US continued to rise on Friday. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported six people killed just in Georgia.

Two people in Laurens county, and two others in Jeff Davis county, died in incidents involving falling trees, the newspaper said. Two people were killed when a suspected tornado flipped their mobile home, according to the report.

Reported fatalities elsewhere include a four-year-old girl in a storm-related accident, and person killed by a falling tree in their home, both in North Carolina; and two dead in Florida in separate incidents.

Florida’s governor Ron DeSantis is expected to update reporters imminently about the situation in his state.

Some perspective of Hurricane Helene’s strength from veteran meteorologist and hurricane watcher Jeff Masters, who says the storm was the eighth category 4 or 5 cyclone to make landfall in the last eight years.

By contrast, that’s exactly the same number from the previous 57 years combined.

My colleague Oliver Milman has this analysis of the effect of the climate emergency on hurricane activity. He writes:

“Not only is the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity the cause of 100% of warming since 1950, scientists say it is also causing hurricanes like Helene to become fiercer and accelerate more quickly.

The average intensification rate of hurricanes today is nearly 30% greater than it was before the 1990s due to a hotter atmosphere and oceans, according to a study published last year. The path of Helene across the Gulf of Mexico has been exceptionally hot this year, with this increased heat made at least 200 times more likely due to human-caused climate change, according to Climate Central.

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