Rescuers Push Through Helene Debris to Find People and Restore Power
The New York Times
Blocked roads and bad cellphone service in remote mountain towns have made it hard to find people who are still unaccounted for after the storm.
Rescuers fanned out across the mountains of southern Appalachia on Tuesday, scouring the region for missing people and rushing supplies to communities still in dire need of food, water and power after Hurricane Helene.
“The challenges are immense,” Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina said at a news conference, adding that 92 search-and-rescue teams were working across the state.
More than 130 people across six states died as a result of the storm, and the toll was expected to rise. Almost a third of those killed were in the county surrounding Asheville, N.C., where an unknown number of people were still unaccounted for on Tuesday.
The military has joined the relief and rescue efforts across the Southeast. Maj. Gen. Todd Hunt, the head of the North Carolina National Guard, said 800 soldiers were on duty as of Tuesday morning, pushing into more cutoff parts of the state.
In South Carolina, nearly a thousand National Guard soldiers were on the ground, along with 18 chain-saw teams, Gov. Henry McMaster said at a news conference. “Things are getting better,” he said, “but we’re not out of the woods yet.”
Persistent power outages caused by toppled trees were still a “choke point,” he added.
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