The damage from Hurricane Helene could total more than $160 billion, and it is already the second-deadliest hurricane in a quarter-century, according to estimates.
Since Helene made landfall in Florida late last week, at least 202 deaths from Florida to Virginia have been attributed to the storm and its aftermath, and another 600 people are missing, according to an NBC News tally. The figure makes Helene the second-deadliest U.S. storm of the 21st century, behind only Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,392 people in 2005.
Similar to Katrina, which affected New Orleans in ways that still reverberate 19 years later, the implications of the storm on swaths of the Southeast will be felt for years to come, even after the worst of the damage is dealt with.
A separate estimate of damages and economic losses from AccuWeather is similarly staggering: The damage, much of it in the form of flooding in southern Appalachia, could total as much as $160 billion. Population centers in the path of the storm, such as Asheville, N.C., and Tampa Bay, Fla., have taken much of the damage, but smaller towns such as Chimney Rock, N.C., were all but swept away last week.
The storm and a smaller bout of rainfall in the days leading up to it dumped an estimated 42 trillion gallons of rain on the Southeast, according to The Associated Press, an amount equivalent to the capacity of Lake Tahoe.
As of Thursday, when President Biden is set to visit Georgia and Florida to meet with local leaders, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other federal agencies have deployed an estimated 5,000 people. FEMA also estimated it has shipped more than 9 million meals, 11 million liters of water and 150 generators to the affected region, while also providing an estimated $20 million in upfront recovery funding.
FEMA has also lifted the “immediate needs funding” status of funds allocated by the recent continuing resolution to keep the government open. This allows the agency to fund activities beyond immediate, lifesaving action.
However, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned Wednesday that while “we are meeting the immediate needs with the money we have,” the agency lacks the funds to address similar storms later in the season. The funding for the federal government provided by the continuing resolution is set to run out in December.
Lawmakers from affected states in both parties have called for Congress to reconvene to pass additional disaster relief funds left out of the spending bill, while Biden has suggested he may call for a new session in October.