At least eleven people died in Georgia and five in Florida after Hurricane Helene, American officials announced Friday. Millions of residents are without electricity.
This storm was deadly. Eleven deaths have been confirmed,” Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said Friday. One of those people was part of a rescue team, he said.
“There were five deaths linked to the storm,” the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, on the west coast of Florida, also confirmed. Another death was confirmed in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Particularly widespread hurricane
The storm crossed Florida into neighboring Georgia, the US National Hurricane Center (NHC) said, urging residents to stay safe from “catastrophic winds”, storm surge and heavy rain. “This is an extremely dangerous situation,” with winds similar to a tropical storm recorded up to 500 km from the eye of the hurricane, the NHC continues.
For the body, the passage of Hurricane Helene constitutes “one of the most significant meteorological events to have occurred in the western parts of the region in the modern era”. Its particularity is to be a particularly widespread hurricane. Its size makes it “one of the largest hurricanes over the Gulf of Mexico this century.”
If several hurricanes have already hit the United States this year, including Béryl and Debby, they were less powerful than Hélène when they made landfall.
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Gradual weakening
After making landfall, the hurricane gradually weakened, going from category 4 to first on the Saffir-Simpson scale of 5, with winds blowing at 145 km/h. It then became a tropical storm as it passed over Georgia.
According to the tracking site PowerOutagemore than two million homes and businesses are without power in Florida and Georgia as the storm moves north. More than 55 million Americans are affected by a weather alert, with tornado warnings in northern Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
The NHC also warned of heavy rain in some locations and life-threatening flooding, as well as numerous landslides in the southern Appalachians.
A feared rise in water levels
Hélène is already pouring intense rains and the risk of marine submersion worries the authorities. The rise in water levels could reach six meters in places on the coasts, the height of a two-story building.
This is a “scenario that is impossible to survive” and which will be accompanied by “destructive” waves that could sweep away houses and move cars, the NHC warned. President Joe Biden “urged” residents to heed “calls to evacuate” issued by authorities.
ats/vic
