Rescuers race to free people trapped by Hurricane Helene after storm kills at least 40 in 4 states

CRAWFORDVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 40 people in four states, snapping trees like twigs, tearing apart homes and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said dozens of people were still trapped in buildings damaged by the Category 4 hurricane. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida's rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida's Panhandle and peninsula meet.

The damage extended hundreds of miles to the north, with flooding as far away as northeast Tennessee, where a "dangerous rescue situation" was unfolding after 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital while rapid waters flooded the facility, according to Ballad Health.

In North Carolina, a lake used in the movie "Dirty Dancing" overtopped a dam. People in surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it was about to fail.

Multiple hospitals in southern Georgia were without power, and authorities were “having a hard time getting to places,” so teams with chainsaws were “working to free up roads,” Kemp told a news conference. Tornadoes also were confirmed.

Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours.

"It took me a long time to breathe,” Laurie Lilliott said of the moment she found her home destroyed in Dekle Beach, Florida.

As she surveyed the damage, her named and phone number were still inked on her arm in permanent marker, an admonition by Taylor County officials to help identify recovered bodies in the storm's aftermath.

All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents had been told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. He said people who stayed because they didn’t believe the warnings had to hide in their attics to escape the rising water.

“We tried to launch boats, we tried to use high-water vehicles and we just met with too many obstacles,” Gualtieri said. He said the death toll could rise as emergency crews go door-to-door in the flooded areas.

Increasing numbers of deaths also were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Video on social media sites showed sheets of rain coming down and siding coming off buildings in Perry, Florida, near where the storm arrived. One news station showed a home that was overturned, and many communities established curfews.

“It’s really heartbreaking,” said Stephen Tucker, after the hurricane peeled the brand-new roof off a church in Perry that had been replaced after Hurricane Idalia last year.

When the water rose up to Kera O’Neil’s knees inside her Hudson, Florida, home, she knew it was time to escape.

“There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have not much room to breathe,’” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.

President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency has deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late morning. In Tampa, some areas could be reached only by boat.

Officials elsewhere warned that the water could contain live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

“If you are trapped and need help please call for rescuers – DO NOT TRY TO TREAD FLOODWATERS YOURSELF,” the sheriff’s office in Citrus County, Florida, warned in a Facebook post.

Nearly 4 million homes and businesses were without power Friday morning in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.

In Georgia, an electrical utility group is warning of “catastrophic” damage to the state's utility infrastructure. The Georgia Electric Membership Corp., which represents the state’s electric cooperatives, said the hurricane damaged more than 100 high voltage transmission lines.

And Georgia Power Co. was conducting an emergency release of water from a dam in the northeast of the state following the heavy rains.

The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River on Florida's Gulf Coast. That location was only about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of where Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appeared to be greater than the combined damage of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

“It’s tough and we understand that. We also understand that this is a resilient state,” DeSantis said at a news conference in storm-damaged St. Pete Beach, Florida.

Atlanta was drenched, leaving some neighborhoods so flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking out of the water.

As the hurricane’s eye passed near Valdosta, Georgia, a city of 55,000 near the Florida line, dozens of people huddled early Friday in a darkened hotel lobby. Helene is the third storm to strike the city in just over a year.

“I feel like a lot of us know what to do now,” said Fermin Herrera, 20, cradling his sleeping 2-month-old daughter in a downstairs hallway of the hotel. “We’ve seen some storms and grown some thicker skins."

Soon after it crossed over land, Helene weakened to a tropical storm, then weakened again to a tropical depression. Forecasters said it continued to produce catastrophic flooding with some areas receiving more than a foot of rain. A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out a section of an interstate at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

In North Carolina, forecasters warned of flooding that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. Evacuations were underway in several areas of the state Friday, and around 300 roads were closed. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

“It’s terrible. I don’t know if I will ever see anything like this again,” said Spencer Tate Andrews, of Asheville, North Carolina.

School districts and multiple universities canceled classes. Florida airports that had closed due to the storm reopened Friday. Inspectors were out examining bridges and causeways along the Gulf Coast to get them back open to traffic quickly, the state’s transportation secretary said.

Helene also swamped parts of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, flooding streets and toppling trees as it brushed the resort city of Cancun and passed offshore this week. In western Cuba, Helene knocked out power to more than 200,000 homes and businesses as it brushed past the island.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

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Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.