People toss buckets of water out of a home as the streets and homes are flooded near Peachtree Creek after hurricane Helene brought in heavy rains over night on Sept. 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. Hurricane Helene made landfall late Thursday night as a category 4 hurricane in the pan handle of Florida and is working its way north, it is now considered a tropical storm. (Photo by Megan Varner | Getty Images)
Hurricane Helene has killed at least 15 people in Georgia, including a first responder, and others were still trapped inside of buildings midday Friday in the hardest-hit areas.
“At this time, this has been a deadly storm,” Gov. Brian Kemp said during a briefing Friday. “When we ask people to stay off the roads and be patient, it’s because we are trying to get to people. It’s a very dangerous environment, and one of our finest has lost his life trying to save others.”
Kemp said there are “multiple structures” where people are trapped inside. In Valdosta, 115 buildings have been identified that were heavily damaged, some with people still inside as of midday Friday.
“We’ll have to literally cut our way into situations like this,” he said.
Kemp declined to provide details about the state’s fatalities, other than to say they were all in the storm’s path. Next of kin is still being notified, he said. The state’s death toll had reached 15 as of Friday evening, said the governor’s spokesman, Garrison Douglas.
The first responder who died was a part-time assistant fire chief in Blackshear named Vernon “Leon” Davis who was killed when a tree fell on his truck, Jacksonville-based First Coast News reported. He had been clearing downed trees and power lines.
The death toll from the storm was approaching 100 people throughout the region, according to the Associated Press.
“I had to get out and see what was going on in my community and y’all, it has been devastating,” U.S. Rep. Rick Allen, an Augusta Republican, said at a Friday press conference in Augusta, adding that a “dear friend” had been killed by a tree that fell on their home.
Helene barreled through Georgia during the night and left about 1 million locations without power in the state.
The storm made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane at a little after 11 p.m. in Taylor County, Florida, with 140-mph winds. It remained a hurricane until 5 a.m. Friday – about six hours after landfall, said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service.
“At six hours, it was still a hurricane, doing quite a bit of damage into Georgia as well,” Graham said. “The tropical storm force winds were sustained all the way to upstate South Carolina, which is really just amazing, the extent of the winds in the storm. At several times, the tropical storm force winds extended 350 miles or so away from the center, which is pretty staggering.”
Preliminary analysis shows as much as 11 inches of rain in parts of the affected area, including Georgia.
The full scope of the storm was still being assessed in Friday’s daylight, but Kemp said that initial reports suggest the damage will likely be worse than Hurricane Michael, which devastated the state’s agriculture industry in 2018.
“We know it’s one of the widest wind fields ever in the Atlantic, which made it a statewide event for us here in Georgia. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of damage to assess,” Kemp said.
Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper said Friday that “east of I-75 we’re seeing significant damage to agriculture in all commodities.”
Kemp urged people to stay home if possible while crews work in the storm’s aftermath and warned Georgians not to become complacent as the skies clear.
“For people in the metro area, it is still very dangerous out there. The loss of life that we’ve seen, a lot of it has been by falling trees because of saturated ground, and even though the winds are starting to die down, there’s still trees literally falling,” he said.
To illustrate the point, Kemp said a tree fell across the driveway at the governor’s mansion shortly after he left for the state operations center.
In north Georgia, the risk of flooding also remains as the state’s waterways continue to rise for the next day or so.
Georgia Recorder reporter Ross Williams contributed to this report.
This story was originally produced by the Georgia Recorder which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network, including the Daily Montanan, supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.