Relief efforts continue after Hurricane Helene kills at least 191

Our live coverage of Helene has ended. Follow Thursday’s coverage here.

As they recover from the damage wrought by Helene, a number of national and state parks in the Southeast remain closed while others are discouraging visitors due to low staffing and safety concerns.

Parts of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – the most visited national park last year, with more than 13 million visitors – are open, but outdoor recreation in the park is discouraged because of limited staffing levels and visitor safety concerns. Several roads in the park – situated in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee – are closed, the National Park Service said Monday.

Another popular tourist destination, Congaree National Park in South Carolina, will be closed through Thursday as staff conducts repairs to park infrastructure and addresses hazards.

In North Carolina, all state parks west of Interstate 77 are closed through at least October 31, the North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation announced Wednesday. These include the Chimney Rock, Crowders Mountain, Elk Knob, Gorges, Grandfather Mountain, Lake James, Lake Norman, Mount Mitchell, New River, South Mountains and Stone Mountains state parks, as well as the Mount Jefferson State Natural Area and Rendezvous Mountain.

The closures will help limit travel in the area while roads and infrastructure are repaired or replaced, the division said. Before reopening to the public, staff will assess conditions, clear downed trees and address any safety hazards.

The Blue Ridge Parkway – a popular scenic route spanning more than 400 miles along the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and Virginia – is closed through North Carolina as crews assess damage from Helene, according to the National Park Service.

As of Tuesday, 99 National Park Service employees were working with Blue Ridge Parkway staff on recovery efforts. No date has been set for reopening the closed portions.

In Florida, 32 state parks were closed to the public as of Wednesday, according to Florida State Parks. And in Virginia, nine state parks were closed or had partial closures as of Tuesday.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy is asking hikers to?postpone their hikes?on the southern part of the trail from Georgia to Rockfish Gap, Virginia. The conservancy?called this?the “largest natural disaster—in terms of geographic footprint—to impact the Appalachian Trail in its 100-year history.”

CNN’s Elizabeth Wolfe contributed to this report.

Destroyed homes are seen in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, on October 2, 2024, after the passage of Hurricane Helene. T

After Helene destroyed countless homes and businesses and upended lives across the Southeast, federal officials are warning of another looming threat: con artists and scammers looking to take advantage of desperate storm survivors and good Samaritans.

Common scams include price gouging and identity theft. Fraudsters may also try to steal money or personal information by creating fake charities, impersonating insurance providers or government officials, or promising fast home repairs in exchange for up-front or partial payments, the US Attorney’s Office warned.

Several state Attorneys General and FEMA have provided advice on how to avoid being scammed.

Here’s how you can protect yourself:

See more steps you can take here and here. If you believe you have been the victim of a scam, you can report it to your state consumer protection office and submit a complaint with the National Center for Disaster Fraud.

The death toll from Helene has jumped to at least 191 across six states, according to CNN’s tally, after two more deaths were announced in Tennessee.

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people in 2005.

Here’s the breakdown of deaths from Helene by state:

Power crews work along Riverside Drive in the destroyed River Arts District in Asheville, North Carolina, on October 1.

About 1 million energy customers still are without power across six states after Helene ripped through critical power infrastructure stretching from Florida to West Virginia, according to PowerOutage.us.

South Carolina had more outages than any other state, followed closely by North Carolina. In the western Carolinas, “major portions of the power grid … were simply wiped away,” regional energy provider Duke Energy said.

Though utilities across the region are slowly restoring service, some areas are eyeing prolonged, extensive repairs. About?half of the power outages?in upstate South Carolina and the mountains of North Carolina will require “a significant repair or complete rebuild of the electricity infrastructure that powers this region,” Duke Energy said Tuesday.

Here’s where the outages stood as of 9 p.m.:

An Asheville, North Carolina, man captured the moment a local tea company’s building was torn apart by floodwaters as it floated down the bloated Swannanoa River.

As Chris Faber sat in his apartment in Asheville on Friday, he watched out his window as floodwaters rushed by carrying dislodged buildings, shipping containers and trees.

“Hey, there’s a building coming!” someone in the video can be heard yelling.

“It’s gonna hit the pole … right here,” Faber can be heard saying just as the building slams into a telephone pole outside. The floodwaters continue to push the building through the pole, ripping the building in half.

That building was the home of the Asheville Tea Co., which has lost everything.

“It’s unfathomable,” Jessie Dean, the company’s founder, told CNN on Wednesday when recapping the past few days of recovery. All of its employees and their families are safe, she said.

Dean started the company in 2016, but the company had just moved into that particular building last year. “We put so much love and heart and soul into that space,” Dean said. Ahead of the storm, Dean spent last Thursday moving things inside to at least 3 feet off the ground, but the company lost everything nevertheless.

Dean hiked up to higher grounds Friday to see if she could catch a glimpse of the building. “When I looked down, I knew that it was all gone, all I could see was water below,” she said tearfully.

The video captured by Faber made its way to Dean, who says the structure is identifiable by its skylights. “It was very hard to watch, especially when it gets sliced in half,” she said.

“Going forward we are committed to rebuilding this company, and most important thing is financial help to get things off the ground,” Dean said. “We are heartbroken for the community as a whole.”

Aidan Bowles, left, and Samuel Bowles.

Samuel Bowles’?father?was positive he had dodged catastrophe as?Hurricane Helene slammed into?Florida’s Gulf Coast, the son?told CNN.

His 71-year-old father, Aidan Bowles, was prepared to go to a hotel room in Tampa on September 26 because he was under a mandatory evacuation order in Pinellas County, but decided against leaving his home at the last minute.

The next morning, Samuel Bowles received a call from police. His father died in Indian Rocks Beach, having apparently drowned in the rising water that entered his home, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office.

“I think the water rushed in so fast that my?father?unfortunately just didn’t have an answer?for?it,” Samuel Bowles said. “His house was basically halfway underwater.”

A selection of photos taken Wednesday shows some of the daunting tasks of cleanup and recovery that remain in western North Carolina nearly a week after Helene struck.

See more photos of Helene’s aftermath.

Debris is seen in Lake Lure, North Carolina, on Wednesday.

Sabra English carries important papers out of her father's flooded home in Barnardsville, North Carolina.

A damaged home is seen in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

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By Isabel Rosales, CNN

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Updated 12:22 AM EDT, Thu October 3, 2024

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See the treacherous area where rescuers are trying to save survivors

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Dozens of FEMA search and rescue personnel are navigating treacherous, winding roads and lack of communications as they try to find people stranded in the aftermath of Helene.

CNN’s Isabel Rosales on Tuesday followed a FEMA team in the Blue Ridge Mountains assisting the North Carolina National Guard. The 80-member team includes K-9 teams, rescue physicians, engineers, firefighters and rescue technicians, Stuart said.

Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, are working to make contact with 26 people who are unaccounted for after Helene, an official said in a news conference Wednesday.

Meanwhile, authorities in North Carolina’s Buncombe County, where Asheville is situated, say the number of people for whom they need to do welfare checks in unincorporated areas of the hard-hit county has dropped to four – down from hundreds days earlier – other officials said.

Asheville once had a list of 155 missing people connected to the city, but officials have been able to narrow that down to 26, Asheville Police Chief Mike Lamb said at the news conference.

One of the people on the list was found dead, and that person’s family has since been notified, he said.

For Buncombe County, officials had a list of 300 to 400 people to do welfare checks on, and that number is now down to four, Sheriff Quentin Miller said. When asked to clarify how many people are missing in the county, he said he was “unable to report that right now.”

The county’s number for welfare checks deals with unincorporated areas, as cities with police departments are responsible for their cities’ unaccounted lists, county spokesperson Lillian Govus told CNN. The county isn’t providing a number of people unaccounted for because the situation is fluid, Govus said.

The death toll from Helene has jumped to at least 182 across six states, according to CNN’s tally, after two more deaths were announced in Florida.

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people in 2005.

Here’s the breakdown of deaths from Helene by state:

Vice President Kamala Harris greets people before a briefing at the Augusta Emergency Operations Center in Augusta, Georgia, on Wednesday.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to travel to North Carolina and survey the damage from Hurricane Helene “in the coming days,” according to the White House.

Harris spoke with Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer on Tuesday and received updates on ongoing response and recovery efforts. The White House says she?reaffirmed the Biden administration’s commitment to providing resources and “life-saving support” to the communities impacted.

Rod and Kim Ashby

Rod Ashby and his wife, Kim, built their home 20 feet above the historic flood lines of the Elk River in North Carolina. But their daughter, Jessica Meidinger, said their foundation was no match for Helene’s destructive tide.

The couple was eating breakfast Friday morning when Rod realized something was wrong, their family said. Within seconds, the house was swept away into the river.

Jessica said her stepdad grabbed her mom and their three dogs and held onto a mattress as their house floated down the river. At a bend in the river, the house slammed into the bank and blew apart, she said.

The couple tried to cling to a section of wall until it too broke apart and they were separated.

Rod searched the riverbank for his wife and then sought help at a neighbor’s house. Days later, the family says search teams are still looking for Rob’s “soul mate.”

Kim Ashby and her husband, Rod, were at their home in Elk Park, North Carolina, on Friday when it was swept away by floodwaters. Kim Ashby is still missing. A neighbor captured a photo of the home as it floated down the river.

“She’s a fighter,” Kim’s daughter-in-law, Lauren, said. “So, we know that if she got out of that water that she’s alive. It’s just, did she get out of the water?”

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, announced it will provide free service for 30 days in regions affected by Hurricane Helene.

After 30 days, Starlink said customers will be moved to a “paid residential subscription, tied to the location you are using it in at that time,” adding: “We will reevaluate as necessary based on conditions in the area.”

School districts in Florida’s 67 counties are back to normal operations today following Hurricane Helene, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced on Wednesday.

“We’re not even a week after this hurricane, and people are back,” the governor said. “Last Thursday night, you had a big storm hit, and then here we are, with all the school districts open.”

Sixty-five school districts had closed ahead of the storm. Fifty-six of those reopened Monday, with four more reopening Tuesday, and the remaining five districts reopened today, according to Florida Commissioner of Education Manny Diaz.

DeSantis noted reopening school districts brings challenges, as some teachers, faculty, and administrators may have lost their homes. In response, the governor announced the state would award $50,000 from the Florida Disaster Fund to county support organizations in the hardest hit school districts, including Taylor, Dixie, Suwannee, Levy, and Madison counties.

As the death toll continues to soar from Helene, a new study found storms kill long after they’ve left an area and highlights the long-term health risks for those impacted by the storm.

Researchers analyzed more than 500 tropical cyclones that impacted the continental US between 1930 and 2015, and compared the number of deaths in a state after it was hit to the area’s mortality rate under normal, pre-storm conditions.

They found an average tropical cyclone in the US is responsible for between 7,000 and 11,000 more deaths over the course of 15 years than would otherwise be expected had the storm not hit, according to the study published in the journal Nature Wednesday.

So substantial is the “undocumented” toll from storms that the researchers said it represented 3.2 to 5.1% of all deaths in the continental US.

The excess deaths are not tied directly from the storm like drowning in floodwaters, but from complex and varied indirect factors such as loss of income, exposure to pollutants and other health issues that arise following the storm.

The results spotlight the potential long-term health risks to those impacted by Helene, particularly the most vulnerable, and highlights “the need for us to reevaluate and adjust disaster response policies to account for prolonged health impacts,” according to Rachel Young, lead author of the study and a visiting researcher at Stanford University.

Southeastern states like Florida more frequently hit by storms had the highest proportion of deaths, but researchers found less frequently impacted areas have a higher mortality risk compared to areas that are more frequently hit.

“In a world with climate change, this could mean greater excess mortality because places that are less used to being hit by storms may experience storms more often,” Young told CNN.

“However, this also means there are lessons that can be learned from states, such as Florida,” Young added.

A week ago, Katie Button’s popular Asheville, North Carolina, restaurants Cúrate and La Bodega were thriving. Now, she says it could take up to a month before the restaurants even have access to running water.

As the community tries to comprehend the magnitude of Helene’s destruction, Button said she’s focusing on doing what she can to help those in dire need. Her restaurants have partnered with chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen to deliver meals and water to those who have been cut off because of the storm.

She estimates they will have prepared 3,000 meals for residents in Asheville and the surrounding community by the end of the day.

“We’re able to do it because World Central kitchen is trucking water in for us to be able to use,” Button said. “We will do at least 1,000 meals a day. And then they helicopter those meals to people who are completely cut off from road access. There’s so many challenges.”

The northeast Tennessee river at the heart of the region’s deadly flooding surged at a historic rate during Hurricane Helene, state officials said Wednesday.

The Nolichucky River was moving water at 162 times its normal rate in the aftermath of the storm, according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

Three of the five bridges destroyed in the storm were on the Nolichucky, the Tennessee Department of Transportation said.

“You all have seen them. There’s nothing there,” Butch Eley, state transportation department commissioner, said in a news conference.

The floodwaters that wreaked havoc in Asheville, North Carolina, and decimated homes and businesses can be seen from space in new satellite imagery from the immediate aftermath of the storm.

Buncombe County, home to Asheville, has been one of Hurricane Helene’s hardest-hit areas. Dozens of people have died there, first responders are still searching for people who are unaccounted for and many areas remained without water, electricity or cell service.

Asheville residents Maxwell Kline and Samuel Hayes describe the aftermath as “complete pandemonium.”

The downtown River Arts District neighborhood was inundated with oil contaminated floodwaters after the French Broad River swelled to a historic high, Kline and Hayes said.

Left, this SkySat image captured in May 2023 shows an overview of Asheville, North Carolina, prior to Hurricane Helene. Right, shows Asheville after Helene on September 29, 2024.

Biltmore Village, seen in the image below, suffered from severe flooding when the Swannanoa River rose to a historic high there. Resident Pattiy Torno lost both her house and her art studio, Curve Studios & Garden.

This SkySat image captured in May 2023 shows part of Asheville, North Carolina--including Biltmore Village--prior to the flooding from Hurricane Helene.

This SkySat image captured on September 29, 2024, shows part of Asheville, North Carolina--including Biltmore Village--during the flooding from Hurricane Helene.

A large Baxter International manufacturing plant in North Carolina that supplies critical intravenous fluids and dialysis solutions has been temporarily closed following damage from Hurricane Helene. It’s a major disruption to the national supply chain that could significantly impact hospitals and dialysis centers across the country.

The US Food and Drug Administration had not yet declared any new shortages related to this closure as of Tuesday, but multiple federal agencies are involved in recovery efforts to get the plant back online and coordinate interim plans to help minimize the risk.

Baxter International’s North Cove site – located in Marion, North Carolina, less than an hour east of hard-hit Asheville – is the largest manufacturer of IV fluids and dialysis solutions in the United States.

The site was “affected by flooding due to the storm and is currently closed for production,” the company said in a?news release?published on Sunday. Federal and local officials are focused on reducing supply chain disruptions and are working closely with the company to determine how much supply is available and options to allocate resources.

In 2017, Baxter facilities in Puerto Rico were severely affected by?Hurricane Maria. Disruptions to the medical supply chain, particularly around IV bags used to administer and dilute medications, lasted for months.

As frustration grows over lack of cell phone service days after states were hit by Hurricane Helene, cell phone providers say they’re facing access issues and other barriers to restoring service.

Here are the latest updates from three major cellular providers:

Robert Gaudet, the founder and CEO of the Cajun Navy, a volunteer disaster rescue and response team, has witnessed the devastation of dozens of natural disasters firsthand.

But he told CNN the destruction from Hurricane Helene has him lost for words.

“We’ve done a lot of disasters – we went to Maui for the wildfires – we’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

“When there’s feet of mud filling up properties and homes and an entire town is washed into a lake … and it’s not just what you see but it’s where you can drive for hours and hours and see the destruction and damage, you lose a sense of how life has been and how it is for you really quickly.”

At least 180 people died across six states, making Helene the second deadliest hurricane to impact the United States since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Gaudet, who founded the Cajun Navy in the aftermath of Katrina, said the death toll continues to be personally difficult for him.

“We do a lot of (disasters) and to hear that over 100 individuals have lost their lives – and those are the ones who have been recovered so far, it’s really horrible,” he said.

Help is on the way after hundreds of thousands of customers were left in the dark last week when Hurricane Helene moved through the Carolinas, taking 370 of Duke Energy’s substations out of service, according to the company.

“With water levels coming down, we are starting to see some of this damage. We had entire substations that were under water,” Bill Norton with Duke Energy said.

For those that were damaged and cannot be repaired “in a timely manner,” mobile substations are now being installed to allow for restoration of services within days, rather than weeks or months, Duke Energy said on Wednesday.

The energy provider keeps a fleet of dozens of mobile substations across its service areas, Jeff Brooks, a spokesperson for Duke Energy, told CNN. These mobile units, weighing 200,000 pounds each, are frequently used in storm response situations, Brooks said.

Three units are now being brought into the hard-hit Buncombe County area of North Carolina to temporarily replace substations in need of being fully rebuilt, according to Brooks, who noted the large-scale undertaking that rebuilding substations requires.

“If there are mobile substations in place, that allows (us) to do other repairs that don’t have temporary options,” he said.

Because of the units’ enormous weight and size, Duke Energy works with state and local officials to make sure paths are clear for the mobile substations to get to where they’re needed. This includes grading paths and doing engineering studies to check that roads will hold, Brooks said.

“It takes an electric army to respond to a major storm like this,” Brooks told CNN.

Helene was one of the wettest tropical systems on record in South Carolina, preliminary rainfall totals indicate

Helene’s deluge unfolded less than two months after Debby made a similar mark in the state’s history books.

Debby and Helene are now two of the three wettest tropical systems on record in South Carolina, according to data analyzed by Melissa Griffin of the state’s Department of Natural Resources. Only 2018’s Hurricane Florence produced more rain as a tropical cyclone.

Six of the 10-wettest tropical systems have slammed the state in the past 10 years. Tropical systems are getting wetter over time in a world warming due to fossil fuel pollution.

Two separate climate analyses of Helene found the hurricane’s rainfall was worsened because of climate change, making what would have already been a disastrous situation even worse. One found storms like Helene were 20% wetter and the other that Helene was 50% wetter because of climate change.

Even the low end figure represents “an enormous increase,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said Tuesday.

“(Helene) was more extreme than it would have been in a cooler climate,” Swain explained. “Similar events in a couple decades from now will be notably more intense than they are today.”

CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller contributed to this report.

Debris left in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene fills the street on October 1 in Marshall, North Carolina.

President Joe?Biden?has directed Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin to approve 1,000 active-duty soldiers to bolster Hurricane Helene response and recovery efforts in North Carolina, he announced Wednesday.

“These soldiers will speed up the delivery of life-saving supplies of food, water, and medicine to isolated communities in North Carolina – they have the manpower and logistical capabilities to get this vital job done, and fast,” Biden said.

This is in addition to “hundreds” of North Carolina National Guard members currently deployed, he noted.

FEMA is still working with state and local officials to confirm how many people are missing in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

More than 3,500 FEMA personnel have been deployed – including 1,200 in North Carolina alone – to aid in search and rescue and recovery efforts, Criswell said.

“As we look at the infrastructure damages to water, to cell lines, to power, the ability to get those turned back on is going to be complicated just by the way Appalachia is configured,” she said.

The agency is sending additional personnel, Criswell said, and repairing some of the facilities will take weeks, not days.

The FEMA administrator said her agency is working with cell phone companies to bring in portable “cell on wheels,” or COWS, to help ensure residents can contact emergency services and their loved ones.

“We’re seeing some cell phone service start to improve but we know that it’s still limited in so many different areas,” Criswell said. “We’re going to move more in so that we can broaden that accessibility.”

She urged those who have been unable to locate their loved ones to dial 211 to help account for those who are missing.

Vice President Kamala?Harris?on?Tuesday discussed?federal?resources that are being deployed?in?Georgia following?Hurricane?Helene’s destruction?in?parts of?the?state ahead of her trip to?the?state.

“We’ve?got?boots?on?the?ground?in?Georgia.?There has been a big effort that we have made to make sure we get food, water and generators to folks who need?them after?the?hurricane,”?Harris?said?during an?interview?with WSB-TV.

The?vice president will travel to Augusta later today to assess?the?impact of?the?storm and be briefed?on the?ground. She is also expected to deliver remarks about response and recovery efforts?in?the?Peach State and?on?the?federal?actions being provided throughout?the?Southeast.

Harris?said?she recently spoke with Gov. Brian Kemp and has been getting regular briefings from FEMA.

“I have been?in?touch with?the?governor. I actually spoke with him. I’ve been getting regular briefings at FEMA,”?Harris?said.

Tennessee state authorities said Wednesday they are investigating the company behind a plastics factory where 11 workers were swept away by flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Helene.

As the nearby Nolichucky River swelled from rainfall, employees in the Impact Plastics factory in Erwin, a small community in rural Tennessee, kept working. Several asserted that they weren’t allowed to leave in time to avoid the storm’s impact. It wasn’t until water flooded into the parking lot and the power went out that the plant shut down and sent workers home.

Several never made it.

The raging waters swept 11 people away, and only five were rescued. Two of them are confirmed dead and are part of a?toll?across six states that has?surpassed 160.?Four others in the factory are still missing since they were washed away Friday in Erwin, where dozens of people were also?rescued off the roof?of a hospital.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Leslie Earhart said Wednesday that the agency is investigating allegations involving Impact Plastics at the direction of the local prosecutor.

District Attorney Steven R. Finney said in a statement that he asked the bureau to look into any potential criminal violations related to the “occurrences” on Friday.

“Impact Plastics has not been contacted by the TBI yet but will fully cooperate with their investigation,” said the company’s spokesperson Tony Treadway. He said the company is preparing an internal review, which will be released to the public.

Some workers managed to drive away from the plant, while others got caught on a clogged road where water rose high enough to sweep vehicles away. Videos show the brown floodwaters covering the nearby highway and lapping at the doors of Impact Plastics.

Jacob Ingram, a mold changer at the factory, filmed himself and four others waiting for rescue as bobbing vehicles floated by. He later posted the videos on?Facebook?with the caption, “Just wanna say im lucky to be alive.” Videos of the helicopter rescue were posted on social media later Saturday.

In one video, Ingram looks down at the camera, a green Tennessee National Guard helicopter hovering above him, hoisting one of the other survivors. In another, a soldier rigs the next evacuee in a harness.

Impact Plastics said in a statement Monday that it “continued to monitor weather conditions” Friday and that managers dismissed employees “when water began to cover the parking lot and the adjacent service road, and the plant lost power.”

In interviews with local news outlets, two of the workers who made it out of the facility disputed those claims. One told?News 5 WCYB?that employees were made to wait until it was “too late.” Another, Ingram, made a similar statement to the?Knoxville News Sentinel.

“They should’ve evacuated when we got the flash flood warnings, and when they saw the parking lot,” Ingram said. “We asked them if we should evacuate, and they told us not yet, it wasn’t bad enough.”

Worker Robert Jarvis told News 5 WCYB that the company should have let them leave earlier.

Jarvis said he tried to drive away in his car, but the water on the main road got too high, and only off-road vehicles were finding ways out of the flood zone.

“The water was coming up,” he said. “A guy in a 4x4 came, picked a bunch of us up and saved our lives, or we’d have been dead, too.”

The 11 workers found temporary respite on the back of a truck driven by a passerby, but it soon tipped over after debris hit it, Ingram said.

Ingram said he survived by grabbing onto plastic pipes that were on the truck. He said he and four others floated for about half a mile (about 800 meters) before they found safety on a sturdy pile of debris.

“We are devastated by the tragic loss of great employees,” company founder Gerald O’Connor said in the statement Monday. “Those who are missing or deceased, and their families are in our thoughts and prayers.”

The two confirmed dead at the Tennessee plastics factory are Mexican citizens, said Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, executive director at Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. She said many of the victims’ families have started online fundraisers to cover funeral costs and other expenses.

Bertha Mendoza was with her sister when the flooding started, but they got separated, according to a eulogy on her GoFundMe page authored by her daughter-in-law, who declined an interview request.

“She was loved dearly by her family, community, her church family, and co-workers,” the eulogy read.

This post has been updated with additional reporting.

Members of the Illinois Water Rescue One team search through debris for survivors in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on October 1.

The floodwaters from Hurricane Helene may have receded, but Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton, North Carolina, says the crisis is far from over.

The mayor told CNN his town’s efforts to locate those missing have been severely hampered by a region-wide power and cellular outage.

“We’ve witnessed an absolute crippling effect of the failure of our telecommunications system. When we needed it the most, it let us down and that is inexcusable,” he said.

Days after the storm, many Western North Carolina residents still find themselves cut off from roads and unable to use their cell phones, the internet, ATMs or credit card machines, despite continued efforts to restore power and cell service.

“We are dealing with recovery for a 21st century storm with 20th century technology,” Smathers said.

Cayla Clark, a comedian based in Asheville was only able to make the drive to Charlotte after finding enough change to partially fill her tank with gas.

“While we’re here we are going to get as much cash as we can to bring back to people who don’t have any cash for things like gas or groceries,” Clark said in a post on Instagram.

With power lines and cell service down, here are a few ways locals and first responders are trying to adapt:

CNN’s Dianne Gallagher contributed to this report

The death toll from Helene has jumped to at least 180 people across six states, according to CNN’s tally, after 14 more deaths were announced in North Carolina.

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people in 2005.

Here’s the breakdown of deaths from Helene by state:

As crews around Asheville, North Carolina, work to restore utilities and repair roads, local public school officials say they don’t know how long it will take to get kids back in class.

“All of our facilities are without water. We have about half of our facilities with power,” said Asheville City Schools superintendent Maggie Fehrman during a Wednesday morning news conference.

Out of the 53 schools in the combined city and county districts, only one currently has running water, officials said.

“We want our students back in our schools as soon as possible,” Buncombe County Schools superintendent Rob Jackson said. “We’re working hard to prepare for that day.”

The Asheville superintendent agreed returning to in-person learning is a top priority.

“During the pandemic, we began to use a word – unprecedented – that we hoped and prayed that we would never use again when we think about our students’ personal lives and their academic lives,” said Jackson. “And yet we are in unprecedented times yet again.”

People in hard-hit regions of the South have complained about frustrating delays in cell service restoration. Despite Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile’s efforts, it could be a while longer before residents are able to reliably connect to the network again.

Cell towers are built to withstand hurricane-force winds and other natural disasters. However, during a power outage, many cells rely on backup generators that eventually run out of fuel. If they’re inaccessible because of flooding or road damage, as is the case in many areas in Hurricane Helene’s path, the cell towers eventually run out of juice and become useless. And floodwaters can also damage the cell towers’ bases, which can delay repairs.

Cell phone companies have tools they can deploy in advance and after a hurricane to keep networks operational, including farm-themed COWs (cells on wheels) and COLTs (cells on light trucks). But even those backup tools require network operators to be able to reach the affected areas.

Verizon said Tuesday afternoon it had restored 60% of its cell towers impacted by the storm. AT&T and T-Mobile said they’re making progress. But even if a majority of the networks are back online, that can feel like an outage to customers who are overwhelming the available cell towers with calls and data usage – especially if they have no Wi-Fi at home.

A new tropical system could form in roughly the same location of the Gulf as Helene tracked and will bring rainy wet conditions to much of the Gulf Coast, including areas still recovering from the hurricane.

A large, disorganized area of low pressure with showers and thunderstorms over the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico has a medium chance of producing a tropical system in the next seven days, according to the National Hurricane Center. The weekend looks to be the earliest time a tropical depression could form.

This new potential system has more factors stacked against development and strengthening than Helene did.

Tropical development is possible within the next seven days.

The winds blowing at various levels in the atmosphere are set to be more disruptive than they were for Helene’s journey. These disruptive winds can prevent storms from organizing in the first place or block organized storms from strengthening.

The potential system is likely to dump rain over parts of the Gulf Coast regardless of whether it eventually reaches tropical storm status.

Rain could begin as early as Thursday for coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle as messy, disorganized storms reach parts of the Gulf. Storminess will expand from there and much of the Gulf Coast’s coastal areas and some inland locations will record wet, dreary conditions by the weekend.

A few areas could end up more soaked than others depending on the exact development and track of the potential tropical system. The Florida Peninsula could record several inches of rain each day from Sunday into at least midweek.

The rain may not be enough to cause widespread flash flooding concerns, but it could hinder ongoing cleanup efforts in affected areas like Tampa, where Helene brought record storm surge last week.

Fortunately, current forecast trends indicate the rain will stay well south of the destruction Helene wrought in the Carolinas.

Even as more roads and highways are cleared and temporary water supplies are getting through, the mayor of Weaverville, a small town north of Asheville in Buncombe County, North Carolina, says they are facing the reality of not having electricity in some areas for the foreseeable future.

Fitzsimmons spoke to CNN News Central’s Kate Bolduan from the entrance to a grocery store, where many residents are congregating for communication to the outside world because it is the only place in town that still has working WiFi, the mayor said.

“Things are improving, but they’re still pretty rough,” Fitzsimmons said.

The mayor says residents in Weaverville – which has a population of less than 5,000 – are helping friends and neighbors and getting to know each other again. “I’ve had more sidewalk conversations in the past five days than I have in the past five years,” said Fitzsimmons.

People salvage what they can from their destroyed house in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on October 1, in Bat Cave, North Carolina.

It been five days since Helene roared through parts of the Southeast and mid-Atlantic and more than 1.3 million homes and businesses in the deadly storm’s path are still without power.

A majority of these outages are in the western Carolinas where Helene caused “unprecedented destruction,” according to the region’s power provider Duke Energy.

“Major portions of the power grid… were simply wiped away,” the utility wrote in a Monday statement.

It’s going to be a long road to recovery. About half of the power outages caused by Helene in upstate South Carolina and the mountains of North Carolina, will require “a significant repair or complete rebuild of the electricity infrastructure that powers this region,” a Duke Energy statement said Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of people are also still without power in Georgia and outages linger in Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.

Here’s where the outages stand as of 8 a.m.:

CNN’s Rebekah Riess and Carolyn Sung contributed to this report.

The death toll from Helene has risen to at least 166 people across six states, according to CNN’s tally, after four more deaths were announced in Henderson County, North Carolina.

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people in 2005.

Here’s the breakdown of deaths from Helene by state:

Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on October 1.

Six days after Helene hit, North Carolina communities are still struggling to access necessities like food and water. Thousands are without power and travel remains dangerous with hundreds of roads closed.

“The response to this crisis so far has been a massive effort of coordination and logistics,” Gov. Roy Cooper said in a news release Tuesday.

Here’s the latest on how the storm has impacted everything from cell service to safe water access in North Carolina:

Residents in parts of eastern Tennessee, are being ordered to conserve as much water as possible as at least 16 utilities in the area have issued boil water advisories, according to the state Department of Environment and Conservation.

A mandatory water conservation order was issued Tuesday for Sullivan, Carter, Johnson, Greene, Unicoi and Washington counties, as well as parts of Cocke, Sevier and Jefferson counties, the department said.

“In this critical time of limited resources clean water is essential for recovery and we call upon all citizens in these affected areas to conserve as much water as is possible,” TDEC Commissioner David Salyers said in a release.

The order asks that residents try to conserve water that is for “non-essential use,” including washing clothes or running dishwashers. Any water meant to be consumed, however, should be boiled in areas under boil-water advisories.

As Helene tore through eastern Tennessee, the storm obliterated at least five bridges, and damaged several other bridges and roadways, leaving residents to grapple with costly repairs and prolonged transportation headaches.

“The storm has caused historic destruction. We anticipate hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and months of closures,” the Tennessee Department of Transportation said in a Tuesday update.

In addition to the five state-owned bridges that were destroyed, at least 12 local bridges were washed out or closed due to damage, the department said. Crews still need to examine 90 local bridges.

Nearly 400 transportation department personnel have been mobilized to the hardest-hit communities, where they are prioritizing repairs to infrastructure that is necessary to give people access to hospitals, food, shelter and water, it said.

“TDOT crews are committed to rebuilding East Tennessee. Many are from the area, and some have even lost their home and possessions, but continue to show up to work.”

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks to a reporter in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 27.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Tuesday that the state’s gas tax will be suspended for about one week in response to Helene.

The suspension will begin on Thursday, October 3, and will last until the state of emergency ends on Wednesday, October 9, according to the governor’s executive order. Kemp declared the state of emergency for Helene on September 24 and extended it until October 9 on Tuesday.

“As Georgians recover from Hurricane Helene, with the support of our legislative partners, I have suspended the gas tax for the duration of this State of Emergency - bringing relief to communities who continue to rely on fuel to power their homes and necessary equipment,” Kemp said in a post on X Tuesday night.

Helene “has negatively impacted the supply chain of goods and services to impacted areas and the social and economic wellbeing of Georgia’s residents,” the order says. The suspension will help “protect the continued strength of Georgia’s economy,” it adds.

Georgia’s tax for regular gasoline is 32 cents and the tax for diesel is 36 cents,?according to the Georgia Department of Revenue.

Remains of a restaurant are seen in Asheville, North Carolina, on Tuesday.

Six days after Helene embarked on its life-altering path across the Southeast, the region remains in the throes of disaster recovery.

At least 162 people have died as a result of the storm, and many others remain unaccounted for as communities across the region are crippled by catastrophic damage. Many people are without homes after Helene leveled neighborhoods and left survivors without necessities such as food, drinking water, cell phone service and electricity.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to travel to the region Wednesday to see the scale of destruction and receive briefings on recovery operations.

Here’s what you need to know:

At least 162 people are dead across six states in Helene’s wake – a number that continues to tick upward as emergency crews search for unaccounted-for residents and survey devastation wrought by the storm.

Helene is the second-deadliest hurricane to strike the US mainland in the past 50 years, following Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,833 people in 2005.

Among the dead are several first responders and a Georgia mother and her twin 1-year-old boys.

Here’s the breakdown of deaths from Helene by state, according to CNN’s tally:

Joe Biden speaks about the federal response efforts for Hurricane Helene, from the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, on Monday.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to visit the Southeast on Wednesday to survey the catastrophic impacts of Helene.

Biden will travel to the Carolinas, where he is expected to take an aerial tour of western North Carolina and receive briefings on recovery operations.

Asheville’s mayor told CNN the president will fly over the city, as opposed to visit by car, because its roads have been so severely damaged. Only one of the highways into Asheville is open and cannot be shut down for the president’s motorcade, Mayor Esther Manheimer said.

Meantime, Harris will visit Augusta, Georgia, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

World Central Kitchen, a relief organization that provides meals after humanitarian crises and weather disasters, said Tuesday it has served more than 64,000 meals in the aftermath of Helene.

Thirty-five food trucks are in operation, and the group is setting up field kitchens in Asheville, North Carolina, and Clearwater, Florida, according to an email from World Central Kitchen. Thirty-two of the trucks are in Georgia and Florida where more than 41,000 meals and 2,600 sandwiches have been served.

“These moments are hard for everybody, but every day I believe will get better, every day will be a little bit better than yesterday,” World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night from Asheville. “This (effort) is massive. We are going to places that by car will take us four and five and six hours. We’re using helicopters because we can get there in 10 or 20 minutes.”

The organization is working with 16 restaurant partners in North Carolina and Tennessee, according to the email. More than 23,000 meals have been served in Tennessee and North Carolina.

“We’ll be ramping our hot meal distribution up very shortly as our kitchens come online,” World Central Kitchen said in the email.

Andres said relief efforts at the Asheville airport, which includes the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Guard, “is something quite frankly I’ve never seen” in his 15 years running the organization.

Five water tankers capable of carrying 6,200 gallons were sent to western North Carolina because shortages caused by infrastructure damage, according to World Central Kitchen.

Arthur Blank, owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United, recently donated $2 million to the organization.

An aerial view of damaged houses are seen after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, on September 28.

Hurricane Helene laid waste to the southeastern United States. Its sheer wind force and deadly floods left behind a path of destruction stretching more than?500 miles?from Florida to the Southern Appalachians.

In just 48 hours, vast swaths of the region became unrecognizable. The storm has caused at least?162 deaths, and officials fear the toll could rise as many people remain unaccounted for.

Communities were cut off and stranded as floodwaters washed away hundreds of roads, buildings, homes and vehicles. Communication infrastructure is in shreds. Millions of people have also lost power and access to water across at least six states.

Here’s what happened:

Read the full timeline and see how the storm unfolded here.

Len Frisbee dumps a wheelbarrow of dirt as he helps with clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Hot Springs, N.C., on October 1.

Two separate?climate?analyses of?Hurricane?Helene have found that fossil fuel pollution worsened what would have already been a disastrous situation.

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, using methods from previously published attribution studies, found that “climate?change caused over 50% more rainfall during?Hurricane?Helene in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas.”

The study also concluded the rainfall which fell in these regions “was made up to 20 times more likely” because of?global warming.

A different analysis comparing Helene to similar?weather?set-ups also found the warmer ocean and atmosphere worsened the storm’s impacts.

The?analysis from ClimaMeter,?a network of European?climate?scientists that help to frame extreme?weather?in historical?climate?perspective, found storms like Helene are now about 20% wetter over the Southeast US and that Gulf of Mexico hurricanes are up to 7% windier than those that occurred decades ago.

Both independent analyses found that?Hurricane?Helene was a largely unique event that would have been a major disaster even without the additional?heat?in the ocean and atmosphere.

Analyses done in the immediate aftermath of?weather?and?climate?disasters — known as “rapid attribution” studies — look at the meteorological variables at play and compare them to previous storms or modeled situations where human-caused warming was not influencing the outcome. This allows scientists to tease out the estimated role that?climate?change played in the events and impacts.