A rare condor hatched and raised by foster parents in captivity now gets to live wild

PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Massive rains from powerful Hurricane Helene left people stranded, without shelter and awaiting rescue Saturday, as the cleanup began from a tempest that killed at least 56 people, caused widespread destruction across the U.S. Southeast and left millions without power.

“I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now,” said Janalea England, of Steinhatchee, Florida, a small river town along the state’s rural Big Bend, as she turned her commercial fish market into a storm donation site for friends and neighbors, many of whom couldn’t get insurance on their homes.

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday with winds of 140 mph (225 kph).

From there, it quickly moved through Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp said Saturday that it “looks like a bomb went off” after viewing splintered homes and debris-covered highways from the air. Weakened, Helene then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was isolated because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. All those closures delayed the start of the East Tennessee State University football game against The Citadel because the Buccaneers’ drive to Charleston, South Carolina, took 16 hours.

There have been hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from a hospital rooftop Friday. And the rescues continued into the following day in Buncombe County, North Carolina, where part of Asheville was under water.

“To say this caught us off guard would be an understatement,” said Quentin Miller, the county sheriff.

Water flooded Janetta Barfield’s car there as a creek overflowed, reaching her lap, before a police officer rescued her.

“It happened so fast to me and scared the life out of me because nothing like that ever happened,” said Barfield, a traveling nurse.

While there have been deaths in the county, Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones said he wasn’t ready to report specifics, partially because downed cell towers hindered efforts to contact next of kin.

Relatives put out desperate pleas for help on Facebook. Among those waiting for news was Francine Cavanaugh, whose sister told her she was going to check on guests at a vacation cabin as the storm began hitting Asheville. Cavanaugh, who lives in Atlanta, hasn’t been able to reach her since then.

“I think that people are just completely stuck,” she said.

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said.

‘Catastrophic’ flooding

It unleashed the worst flooding in a century in North Carolina, where Gov. Roy Cooper described it as “catastrophic” as search and rescue teams from 19 states and the federal government came to help. One community, Spruce Pine, was doused with over 2 feet (0.6 meters) of rain from Tuesday through Saturday.

And in Atlanta, 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain fell over 48 hours, the most the city has seen over two days since record keeping began in 1878.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that Helene’s devastation has been “overwhelming” and pledged to send help.

Helene is the deadliest tropical cyclone for South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo killed 35 people when it came ashore just north of Charleston in 1989. Deaths also have been reported in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage. AccuWeather’s preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from Helene in the U.S. is between $95 billion and $110 billion.

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

Evacuations and overtopped dams

Evacuations began before the storm hit and continued as lakes overtopped dams, including one in North Carolina that forms a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing.” Helicopters were used to rescue some people from flooded homes.

Elin Fisher and her husband, who teach whitewater standup paddleboarding on the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, had to move their camper three times to stay ahead of rising waters.

And in Newport, Tennessee, Jonah Wark waited so long to evacuate that a boat had to come to the rescue. “Definitely a scary moment,” Wark said.

After touring the damage by helicopter, a stunned U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger said, “Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in East Tennessee?”

Among the 11 confirmed deaths in Florida were nine people who drowned in their homes in a mandatory evacuation area on the Gulf Coast in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said.

None of the victims were from Taylor County, which is where the storm made landfall. It came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity.

“If you had told me there was going to be 15 feet to 18 feet of storm surge, even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had multiple fatalities,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Saturday.

Taylor County is in Florida’s Big Bend, went years without taking a direct hit from a hurricane. But after Idalia and two other storms in a little over a year, the area is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway.

“It’s bringing everybody to reality about what this is now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway.

Timmy Futch of Horseshoe Beach stayed put for the hurricane before driving to high ground when the water reached his house. many homes in the town, which his grandfather helped found, were reduced to piles of lumber.

“We watched our town get tore to pieces,” Futch said.

The aftermath

About 60 miles (100 kilometers) to the north, cars lined up before sunrise Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, Florida, amid widespread power outages.

“We’re making it one day at a time,” said Sierra Land, who lost everything in her fridge, as she arrived at the site with her 5- and 10-year-old sons and her grandmother.

Thousands of utility crew workers descended upon Florida in advance of the hurricane, and by Saturday power was restored to more than 1.9 million homes and businesses. But hundreds of thousands remain without electricity there and in Georgia.

Chris Stallings, director of the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, said crews were focused on opening routes to hospitals and making sure supplies can be delivered to damaged communities.

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 season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

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Payne reported from Perry, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed.

The remnants of Hurricane Helene dissipated Saturday but millions remain without power across the Southeast and officials warned that record-breaking river flooding is ongoing in parts of southern Appalachia.

The storm has been blamed for at least 56 deaths across five states, including 23 people in South Carolina and 11 in Florida. But the death toll is sure to rise as authorities continue to take stock of Helene’s devastation. In hard-hit Buncombe County, North Carolina, where Asheville is located, authorities said they know people died but aren’t announcing anything because communication outages haven’t allowed them to reach relatives of the victims.

The hurricane roared ashore Thursday night as a Category 4 storm on Florida’s Gulf Coast and then quickly moved Friday through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Tropical Storm John made its second landfall along Mexico’s Pacific coast Friday, while in its wake authorities in the resort city of Acapulco called for help from anyone with a boat to deal with the flooding. It has since dissipated over Mexico.

Follow AP’s coverage of tropical weather at https://apnews.com/hub/hurricanes.

Here’s the latest:

Tennessee governor calls hurricane damage ‘heartbreaking’

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and other state and federal officials toured east Tennessee by helicopter on Saturday, viewing a scene Lee called “heartbreaking.”

“There’s a great deal of damage, a great deal of heartache, a great deal of work to be done,” he said.

U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger expressed disbelief at the extent of the damage.

“It’s something like we’ve never seen in this part of the state,” she said. “Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in east Tennessee?”

Football team endures 16-hour ordeal to get to game in South Carolina

Flooding turned a bus trip from Johnson City, Tennessee, into a 16-hour ordeal for the East Tennessee State University football Buccaneers on their way to play the Citadel.

Bus drivers found higher ground in Asheville, North Carolina, on their way to Charleston, South Carolina, with kickoff pushed back three hours Saturday.

East Tennessee State coach Tre Lamb wrote on social media that a man who gave coaches a ride to find shelter let them know Interstate 26 South had opened up. The coach also thanked a grocery store for providing his team with food.

Family members drown, despite a relative’s online plea for help

Posting from Texas on Friday, Jessica Drye Turner begged for someone to rescue her family members stranded on their rooftop in Asheville, North Carolina, surrounded by rising flood waters. “They are watching 18 wheelers and cars floating by,” Turner wrote in an urgent Facebook post.

But in a follow-up message, which became widely circulated on social media on Saturday, Turner said help had not arrived in time to save her parents, both in their 70s, and her 6-year-old nephew. The roof had collapsed and the three drowned. “I cannot convey in words the sorrow, heartbreak and devastation my sisters and I are going through nor imagine the pain before us,” she wrote.

Jeff Muenstermann and his wife Lisa, friends of Turner’s, told The Associated Press on Saturday they had spoken to Turner after she posted the initial plea for help. At her request, they messaged members of The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas, where they all attend, to pray for the family’s safety back in North Carolina.

“I just thought they were going to be rescued,” Jeff Muenstermann said. “I asked everybody to pray and they did. And then a couple hours later, her husband called me, completely distraught and said … we lost them. They all drowned.”

Muenstermann said Turner and her husband flew to North Carolina on Saturday to be with Turner’s sister, the mother of the boy who drowned.

“We talked to her last night and we talked to her again today and she’s trying to be real strong,” he said of Turner.

People in western North Carolina are being airlifted from their homes

LAKE LURE, N.C. — Authorities in western North Carolina are using helicopters to rescue people who have been stranded since Helene slammed into the region on Friday.

Rutherford County officials posted on social media that they are working to airlift people from the Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village area, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Asheville.

“As soon as we receive the names of those rescued, we will make every effort to reach out to families and individuals who have inquired about their loved ones,” officials said.

Most of those who were killed in Florida lived in the Tampa Bay area

Ten of the 11 people who died in Florida as a result of Hurricane Helene lived in the Tampa Bay area, officials said Saturday. The other victim was killed when a tree fell on a house in Dixie County, in north Florida.

Nine of the victims lived in mandatory evacuation zones in Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, along Florida’s Gulf Coast. Each of those victims drowned in their homes, according to Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. They ranged in age from 37 to 89.

The other victim died when a sign fell onto a car in Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood.

A Georgia town is having a cookout to feed locals with thawing meat

GROVETOWN, Ga. — With power out and freezers thawing after Hurricane Helene, one Georgia town is having a cookout.

Officials in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, are inviting people to bring their thawing meat to the city garage to cook it for workers and residents.

“We are feeding the community and our crews while supplies last,” the city wrote on its Facebook page.

More than 99% of customers in Columbia County, Georgia, which includes Grovetown, remained without electricity Saturday according to PowerOutage.us. Georgia Power Co., the dominant electricity provider in the county, says it doesn’t yet have an estimate when power will be restored.

“We have no updates as it pertains to power but have seen several crews around the area,” the city wrote in the social media post. “This obviously does not mean power will be restored soon, necessarily, however, crews are working to make this process as efficient as possible.”

Biden ‘deeply saddened’ by deaths and devastation caused by Helene

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday he was “deeply saddened” by the loss of life and devastation from Helene and that he and first lady Jill Biden were praying for the families. Biden was being regularly briefed by his team on the storm, and the leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in the region assessing the damage, along with local officials.

“The road to recovery will be long, but know that my Administration will be with you every step of the way. We’re not going to walk away. We’re not going to give up,” he said.

Eastern Georgia hit especially hard by Helene

VALDOSTA, Ga. — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Helene left a wide swath of destruction on the east side of the state.

“What is looks like from the air is it looks like a tornado went off, it looks like a bomb went off,” Kemp told reporters in Valdosta. “And it’s not just here, it looks like this from here all the way to Augusta.”

“This is certainly going to be multiple days of outage,” Georgia Power Co. CEO Kim Greene said.

Biden says Helene’s devastation is ‘overwhelming’

REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday called the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene “overwhelming” and said his administration was committed to helping the huge swath of the Southeast affected by the storm recover.

In a statement posted on X, Biden said he continues to be briefed by his team about the storm as it tracks north.

“My Administration has been with the people of Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee since before Helene made landfall,” Biden said in the social media post. “And we’ll be on the ground with them helping them recover long after this storm has passed.”

Earlier Saturday, Biden approved a federal emergency declaration for Tennessee. Biden approved emergency declarations for Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina before the storm made landfall.

The declarations authorize FEMA to provide assistance for emergency measures to save lives, protect property, public health and safety, and fund other emergency response measures.

More than 800,000 customers in Georgia still without power

ATLANTA — Utilities in Georgia continue to warn that it will take a significant amount of time to restore remaining electrical outages. Georgia Power Co. said Saturday morning that while it had restored power to more than 450,000 customers, more than 525,000 of its 2.6 million customers remained without electricity. Georgia Electric Membership Corp., which represents electric cooperatives, said it had restored more than 110,000 outages but nearly 320,000 remain.

“Unfortunately, treacherous conditions remain across the state with crews navigating extensive tree damage, persisting flooding conditions and many road closures,” said Georgia Power, the state’s only private electric utility, in a news release.

The electric cooperatives continued to warn of serious damage to high-voltage transmission lines and the substations that convert high-voltage power into the electricity that is delivered to customers.

“The damage to the supply side of the electrical grid from Helene is extensive, surpassing that of 2018’s Hurricane Michael in many areas, and will take longer to assess and repair.” Georgia EMC said.

Georgia Power said it will have to replace thousands of broken power poles and said it is still assessing damage in the hardest-hit areas in the eastern half of the state. The company said it hopes to be able to estimate when service will be restored by later Saturday.

Residents of Florida’s Big Bend grapple with third hurricane since last summer

STEINHATCHEE, Fla. — Residents of rural Taylor County in Florida’s Big Bend went years without taking a direct hit from a hurricane. But after three storms in a little over a year, the area is beginning to feel like a hurricane superhighway.

“It’s wiped out a lot. It’s bringing everybody to reality about what this is now with disasters,” said John Berg, 76, a resident of Steinhatchee, a small fishing town and weekend getaway.

The town of about 1,000 people an hour and a half southeast of Tallahassee sits at the mouth of the Steinhatchee River, flowing out into Deadman Bay and on into the Gulf. It’s a beloved slice of what locals call Old Florida, where generations of families have cherished memories of living along the river and scalloping in the bay.

A number of businesses in town had just reopened ahead of scallop season a few months ago, after sustaining damage from Hurricane Idalia in August 2023. Then a year later, Hurricane Debby washed ashore. Now, Helene came through like a buzzsaw, blowing apart what took decades to build, like a waterfront restaurant called Roy’s, where residents could watch the sun disappear over the salt marshes stretching into the horizon.

Now Roy’s, like many other buildings in town, is just a pile of debris.

“None has ever wiped out Roy’s,” Berg said. “It’s gone. And now to replace it, they have to go a minimum of probably 12, 15 feet in the air to rebuild it.”

The threat of a potential dam collapse in Tennessee eases

NASHVILLE — The threat of a potential dam collapse in eastern Tennessee, near the North Carolina border, was easing on Saturday morning.

Around midnight the Tennessee Valley Authority had issued an emergency warning that the Nolichucky Dam could breach at any time. An update later on Saturday said the Nolichucky River had crested at 8 feet (2.4 meters) over previous record elevations and was receding at about 1 foot (0.3 meters) per hour.

“Our Dam Safety teams are in the process of assessing the condition of the dam to determine next steps,” TVA posted on X.

All roads in western North Carolina are considered closed

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Officials in Buncombe County, North Carolina, said in a Saturday news conference, that all roads in western North Carolina should be considered closed. Interstate 40 and I-26 were impassible in multiple locations. Other roads were washed out or blocked by fallen trees and debris.

More than 100,000 Duke Energy customers in the area were without power. In Asheville, there was no cellular service and no timeline for when it would be restored. Residents were also directed to boil their water. Meanwhile, nearby Woodfin had no running water.

“We have had some loss of life,” County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters. However, he said they were not ready to report any specifics. Officials have been hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages.

Jones said the area experienced a cascade of emergencies that included heavy rain, high winds and mudslides.

Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.

“It’s not that we (were) not prepared, but this is going to another level,” Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “To say this caught us off-guard would be an understatement.”

Death toll rises to at least 52, including 11 in Florida

DEKLE BEACH, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Saturday that there have been at least 11 storm-related deaths in Florida.

The deaths included traffic fatalities and people caught up in storm surge, the governor said during a news conference.

“There were no fatalities in Taylor County, which is where the storm made landfall,” DeSantis said, adding that he credits the people of hard-hit Taylor County for heeding the warnings.

“If you had told me there was going to be 15 to 18 feet of storm surge, even with the best efforts, I would have assumed we would have had multiple fatalities.”

Residents lining up for food in hard-hit Florida town

PERRY, Fla. — The cars started lining up before the sun rose on Saturday at a free food distribution site in Perry, near where the storm made landfall. Dozens of vehicles wound through the parking lot and out onto U.S. Highway 27, filled with families who are running out of food in a county where, as of Saturday morning, 99% of customers didn’t have power.

Sierra Land said although her home seems to have dodged any major damage, with no electricity, she’s lost everything in her refrigerator.

“We’re making it one day at a time,” Land said.

Land said she arrived at the Convoy of Hope distribution site with her two sons, ages 5 and 10, and her grandmother between 6:30 and 7 a.m., more than three hours before volunteers were expected to begin handing out food, water and hygiene kits.

“There was no reason to sit at the house. Not when we needed to be in the line,” Land said. “The kids … they needed to get out and see something besides the four walls.”

If they can sort out how to keep themselves fed, they can focus on other concerns, like Land’s grandfather Franklin Ratliff, who has dementia and COPD and hasn’t been able to use his oxygen since Helene shredded the area’s power grid.

“With his dementia, his focal point is watching TV. And there’s no TV. So it’s been a lot of having to talk with him. Keep him in good spirits because he still doesn’t understand what happened,” Land said. “He kept trying to get up and go outside during the storm.”

Western North Carolina inundated by flooding

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Western North Carolina has been essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. Video shows sections of Asheville underwater.

Francine Cavanaugh said she has been totally unable to reach her sister, son, or friends in the Asheville area.

“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”

Cavanaugh said her sister had no idea how bad the storm would be there. She told Cavanaugh she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”

She saw video of a grocery store near the cabins that was completely flooded.

“I think that people are just completely stuck, wherever they are, with no cell service, no electricity.”

Locals grateful no one was killed in Tampa neighborhood that saw unprecedented storm surge

TAMPA, Fla. — Davis Islands, the Tampa neighborhood that star athletes like baseball’s Derek Jeter and football’s Tom Brady have called home, was cleaning up Saturday after Helene’s chest-high storm surge tore through its streets the day before.

The two islands sit just off the city’s downtown and are home to about 5,000 people. The neighborhood had never seen storm surge like it had Friday. No one died, but homes, businesses and apartments were flooded.

Authorities warned residents to evacuate, and many did, but some stayed behind.

”I don’t think anybody was expecting it,” Faith Pilafas told the Tampa Bay Times. “We’ve kind of gotten accustomed to lots of talk about big storms, and never actually like feeling the effects of it. So for all the people who didn’t leave the island, I feel like they were all just expecting it to be a normal storm, anticlimactic. And wow, were we surprised.”

A 24-year-old restaurant worker, she and her boyfriend watched from their second-floor apartment as the water rose to over 4 feet (1.2 meters). Her boyfriend used his kayak to help people get off the island.

“I mean, just every single business is, like, totally destroyed,” she told the newspaper. “But we don’t know anybody who is seriously injured, and so we’re just really grateful that didn’t happen.”

Debra Ogston returned to her Italian restaurant to find that its heavy coolers had been overturned. She said the job now will be to clean up and reopen.

“We’re resilient,” she told the newspaper. “We’re going to go for progress, not perfection. … The damage here is annoying, and a little heartbreaking. But it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced.”

Vice President Harris urges residents affected by Helene to heed local officials

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday urged residents impacted by Hurricane Helene to pay heed to local authorities as the storm continues to wreak havoc on a significant swath of the southeast.

“The storm continues to be dangerous and deadly, and lives have been lost and the risk of flooding still remains high,” Harris said at the start of a campaign speech in Douglas, Arizona. “So, I continue to urge everyone to please continue to follow guidance from your local officials until we get past this moment.”

Dozens rescued by helicopter from a flooded Tennessee hospital

NASHVILLE — There have been hundreds of water rescues due to Helene, but perhaps none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in East Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

Some 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital while water rapidly flooded the facility, according to Ballad Health.

Ballad Health said on social media that county officials had ordered an evacuation of the hospital Friday morning due to rising water in the Nolichucky River, including 11 patients.

After other helicopters failed to reach the hospital because of the storm’s winds, a Virginia State Police helicopter was able to land on the roof. Three National Guard helicopters with hoist capabilities were sent and Ballad Health assisted with its own helicopter, officials said. After about four hours, all of the staff and patients had been rescued.

▶ Read more about Friday’s dramatic rescue

ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Floodwaters pushed by the remnants of Hurricane Helene left North Carolina’s largest mountain city isolated Saturday by damaged roads and a lack of power and cellphone service, part of a swath of destruction across southern Appalachia that left an unknown number dead and countless worried relatives unable to reach loved ones.

The storm spread misery across western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, where on Friday authorities used a helicopter to rescue dozens of people from the rooftop of a flooded hospital. In North Carolina alone, more than 400 roads remained closed on Saturday as floodwaters began to recede and reveal the extent of damage.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said supplies were being airlifted to that part of the state, and Buncombe County officials said Interstate 26 between Asheville and South Carolina had reopened but most other routes into the city were impassible.

Among those rescued from rising waters was nurse Janetta Barfield, whose car was swamped on Friday morning as she left an overnight shift at Asheville’s Mission Hospital. She said she watched a car in front of her drive through standing water and thought it was safe to proceed. But her car stalled, and within minutes water had filled her front seat up to her chest. A nearby police officer helped her to safety.

“It was unbelievable how fast that creek got just in like five minutes,” Barfield said.

Early Saturday morning, many gas stations were closed because they didn’t have electricity, and the few that were open had hourlong lines wrapped around the block. Where traffic lights were dark, drivers treated the intersections as four-way stops. The hub of tourism and arts, home to about 94,000 people, was unusually still after floodwaters swamped neighborhoods known for drawing visitors including Biltmore Village and the River Arts District, which is home to numerous galleries, shops and breweries.

More than 700,000 customers were without power across North Carolina, including about 100,000 in Buncombe County.

In Asheville, there was no cellular service and no timeline for restoration. Residents were also directed to boil their water. Local officials said they were working on setting up hubs to distribute food and water.

“We have had some loss of life,” County Emergency Services Director Van Taylor Jones told reporters. However, he said they were not ready to report specifics as they were hindered in contacting next of kin by the communications outages. Police Chief Michael Lamb said his department had a list of about 60 people who relatives had not been able to reach and were seeking welfare checks.

Officials said they tried to prepare for the storm but its magnitude was beyond what they could have imagined.

“It’s not that we (were) not prepared, but this is going to another level,” Sheriff Quentin Miller said. “To say this caught us off guard would be an understatement.”

Atlanta resident Francine Cavanaugh said she has been unable to reach her sister, son or friends in the Asheville area.

“My sister checked in with me yesterday morning to find out how I was in Atlanta,” she said on Saturday. “The storm was just hitting her in Asheville, and she said it sounded really scary outside.”

Cavanaugh said her sister told her she was going to head out to check on guests at a vacation cabin, “and that’s the last I heard of her. I’ve been texting everyone that I know with no response. All phone calls go directly to voicemail.”

About 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Asheville in the town of Edneyville, Genevieve Preece was grateful that her family’s home was largely spared and still had water, power and Wi-Fi. Many neighbors were less fortunate.

Preece, who owns a utility contracting firm, opened her home as a place of refuge for people who needed to fill up water jugs or get in contact with worried family members. Her husband spent hours cutting trees to clear roads with neighbors.

“We need help badly, but we are all doing what we can,” Preece said. “It will be months or years to put us back together again.”

In Tennessee, Gov. Bill Lee and other officials toured the northeastern part of the state by helicopter Saturday. He called the Lee “heartbreaking.”

“There’s a great deal of damage, a great deal of heartache, a great deal of work to be done,” Lee said.

U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger expressed disbelief at the extent of the damage.

“It’s something like we’ve never seen in this part of the state. Who would have thought a hurricane would do this much damage in East Tennessee?”

In Greene County, Tennessee, the threat from a stressed dam had passed by Saturday afternoon. The Tennessee Valley Authority, which had warned residents overnight that the Nolichucky Dam could breach, said a thorough review determined it was “stable and secure.” It was one of several being closely monitored.

Along the Pigeon River, the small Tennessee city of Newport suffered heavy flooding.

Kendale Ball, who opened his Simpl Cafe in June after relocating from Knoxville, said the water reached nearly thigh-high.

“We never anticipated it to be this devastating,” he said of the storm.

They tried to move some equipment ahead of the flooding but left town when an emergency evacuation was ordered.

“I know we lost our walk-in cooler, all the refrigeration. We’ll have to assess some of the other stuff.”

In Unicoi County, where the people were rescued from the hospital, Elin Fisher and her husband had to move their camper three times to stay ahead of rising waters. They also helped to move eight other campers.

“We would move things and go, ‘Oh, we’re 30 feet above the waterline,’ go help somebody else move their thing to that level, and go, ‘Oh. We’ve got to move. Again.’ And it was just really, really rapid,” said Fisher, who along with her husband teaches whitewater standup paddleboarding on the Nolichucky River. In the middle of the final move, officials closed the road.

“All of our belongings and our home is on the other side of the river, and we can’t get to it,” she said.

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Simpl Cafe.

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Loller reported from Nashville, and Walker from Newport, Tennessee. Associated Press writer R.J. Rico in Atlanta contributed.