Helene Death Toll Climbs to 230

The death toll from Hurricane Helene has climbed past 230, but many people remain unaccounted for and searching for them is complicated, according to media reports. 

Helene ranks as the most deadly named storm to hit the mainland United States since Katrina, though the 2005 storm claimed a much higher death toll, estimated at 1,400 in a 2023 report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The number of people unaccounted for still remains unclear. Officials put the number in the hundreds earlier in the week, but that has come down as communications are slowly restored and stranded storm victims are located.

The official response has included 1,000 active-duty military personnel ordered to help by President Joe Biden. In addition, 4,800 people from the federal workforce and 6,000 National Guard personnel from 12 states have been deployed, according to the White House.

Another 600 search-and-rescue personnel were due to arrive and supplement the untold number of state and local rescue and relief teams.

Nearly 700,000 homes and businesses — mostly in the Carolinas and Georgia — were still without electricity Friday, according to poweroutage.us. That’s an improvement over the more than 2 million customers without power five days ago, and Duke Energy, the dominant provider in North Carolina, said it hoped to have the lights back on by Sunday night for many of its affected customers. But for roughly 100,000 customers in places with catastrophic damage, it could be next week or longer, according to company spokesperson Bill Norton.

In addition to individual efforts, a number of volunteer groups are supplementing official channels of disaster relief, a long tradition that includes the so-called Cajun Navy, an ad hoc flotilla of civilians who helped rescue people stranded in Louisiana after 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

A volunteer group of private pilots, the Altitude Project, says it raised $200,000 this week to fund operations, said member Andrew Everhart, who owns an insurance agency. His fellow volunteers include a professional race car driver, the owner of a distribution and logistics company, and others who work in commercial real estate and social media content creation.