Relief efforts continue after Hurricane Helene kills at least 191

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.