Recovery work accelerates in the southeastern United States after Helene

PERRY, Florida, USA—Authorities on Sunday accelerated the transportation of supplies by air and the restoration of communications and roads in the flooded Asheville, North Carolinaas residents along the storm-battered Florida coast gathered for religious services amid the debris left by the Hurricane Helene.

The torrential rains caused by the powerful hurricane Helene left people stranded, unsheltered, and waiting to be rescued across the southeastern United States. Cleanup efforts continued Sunday after a storm that killed at least 64 people, caused widespread destruction in southeastern states and left without electricity to several million people.

When the sun rose over the Big Bend de Florida Sunday after Hurricane Helene hit the region, many houses of worship were still dealing with power outages, damaged roofs and debris from the hurricane — and with the knowledge that many of their parishioners are enduring another blow from a devastating storm.

More than 1,000 miles away, in Texas, Jessica Drye Turner He pleaded for someone to rescue his family members. stranded on their rooftop in Asheville, North Carolinasurrounded by floods.

“They are seeing 18-wheelers and cars floating around,” Turner wrote in an urgent Facebook post on Friday.

But in a follow-up message that circulated widely on social media on Saturday, Turner said help had not arrived in time to save his parents, both in their 70s, and his six-year-old nephew. The roof collapsed and the three drowned.

“I cannot put into words the pain, anguish and devastation that my sisters and I are going through, nor imagine the pain we feel,” she wrote.

Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane Thursday night with winds of 140 mph.

From there, it moved quickly through Georgia, where Governor Brian Kemp said Saturday that “it looks like a bomb went off” after seeing destroyed houses and roads covered in debris from an aircraft. Weakened, Helene drenched the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains, overflowing streams and rivers and overloading dams.

___Payne reported from Perry and Hollingsworth from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein in New York; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tennessee; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Susan Haigh in Hartford, Connecticut; and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

Related