In the western part of North Carolina, cleanup work began early Saturday morning.
In the past few days, over a foot of rain fell on most of the area. This made it possible for a disaster to happen as Helene went through as a tropical storm on Friday morning. Flooding and mudslides were very bad.
“This is the worst natural disaster any of us have ever seen in western North Carolina,” said Ryan Cole, who is the assistant head of emergency services for Buncombe County.
Several trees fell in downtown Asheville, and many buildings were injured.
A lot of roads and highways are still closed on Saturday breakfast time.
This is what the Duke Energy power outage map shows: over 100,000 people in Asheville are still without power on Saturday mornings.
Crews from ABC11 said that the roads are full of trash, mud, and other things. Cell service is pretty weak for them.
Over 100 swift-water rescues were done on Friday, with about half of them happening near Asheville. When people saw their loved ones again, they got upset.
Ryan Cole, assistant head of emergency services for Buncombe County, says that roads that were washed out made it impossible for first responders to get to some calls. In that group was a mudslide that destroyed four homes and left an unknown number of people missing.
The storm is thought to have killed three people in North Carolina. 43 people across the country were reported dead from Helene’s effects.
The National Storm Center says the storm, which is now a post-tropical cyclone, will stay over the Tennessee Valley through the weekend. Parts of the south and central Appalachians are still under a number of flood and flash flood alerts. Some parts of Tennessee and Ohio also get high wind alerts.
At least 12 people were hurt when a tornado hit a shopping center in Rocky Mount. Two of them were badly hurt.