Dozens killed as Hurricane Helene batters homes in US

Dozens of people have died after Hurricane Helene raced across a wide area of the southeastern US, with more than three million homes being left without power.

- STEPHEN SMITH, HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a category 4 hurricane late on Thursday, packing winds of 140mph and quickly moving through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee, uprooting trees, splintering homes and sending creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was essentially cut off by landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. Video footage shows sections of Asheville underwater.

There were 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 the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley into today, the National Hurricane Centre said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachians, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.

Among the at least 52 people killed in the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her one-month-old twins, and an 89year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree.