Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region late Thursday as one of the most powerful storms to hit the state, raising fears of deaths, widespread damage and even worse floods than the severe deluge which had preceded its arrival.
Helene hit Florida packing sustained winds of around 130 mph (209 kph), the National Hurricane Center said, making it a powerful Category 4 storm. Even before it made landfall, the storm had flooded the Gulf Coast and knocked out power for at least 1 million customers in the state.
Officials pleaded with residents in the path of the storm to heed mandatory evacuation orders or face life-threatening conditions. Helene’s surge – the wall of seawater pushed on land by hurricane-force winds – could rise to as much as 20 feet (6.1 meters) in some spots, as tall as a two-story house, the center’s director, Michael Brennan, said in a video briefing.
“A really unsurvivable scenario is going to play out” in the coastal area, Brennan said, with water capable of destroying buildings and carrying cars pushing inland.
Strong rain bands were whipping parts of coastal Florida, and rainfall had already lashed Georgia, South Carolina, central and western North Carolina and portions of Tennessee. Atlanta, hundreds of miles north of Florida’s Big Bend, was under a tropical storm warning.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told reporters late Thursday the hurricane had already caused one fatality. He gave no details.
In Pinellas County, which sits on a peninsula surrounded by Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, roads were already filling with water before noon. Officials warned the storm’s impact could be as severe as last year’s Hurricane Idalia, which flooded 1,500 homes in the low-lying coastal county.