Damaged Environment, Properties and Lives

Hurricane Helene Leaves a Devastating Impact on the U.S. Southeast

Photo by Bill McMannis / CC BY 2.0

On Thursday, Sept. 26, Hurricane Helene made landfall near Perry, Fla. as a Category 4 hurricane with 140-mph winds. Helene has been ranked as one of the strongest storms to hit the United States and the strongest recorded in the Big Bend region. The storm caused extreme rains and winds in Tallahassee until 1 a.m. and advanced to Georgia as a Category 2 storm the same night.

“We had pets, and if the power goes out we want to make sure they would be fine, and they wouldn’t do well on the heat, so we decided to evacuate to a hotel in Montgomery,” senior Landon Fantle said.

Though individuals in Tallahassee were relatively well prepared for the storm, Helene ended up hitting the upper states that were unprepared. After lingering in Georgia overnight, the storm made its move to the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee. Despite being weakened to a post-tropical cyclone with 25-mph winds, the event caused severe flooding in parts of North Carolina and Tennessee, threatening dams, closing many roads and leaving hundreds of people waiting for rescue missions.The storm has also affected weather in other states like Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky.

“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?” U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger said.

Due to Helene, more than 3 million people in the U.S. lost power. According to a Fox Weather report from Oct. 2, at least 170 people died across six states, most of which comes from North Carolina, and the number is increasing as investigation continues.

“It’s fortunate for Tallahassee that it turned at the last minute,” upper school physics teacher Will Perry said. “But it’s caused a lot of damage in the Big Bend area, and what it’s done to North Carolina is really unfortunate.”

The storm has damaged homes, businesses and the infrastructure; According to AccuWeather, an estimated economic loss from Helene is between $95 billion and $110 billion. Although the exact cause of the catastrophic storm cannot be named, experts claim that exceptionally warm water in the Gulf exacerbated the phenomenon.