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Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast in late September, destroying roads and bridges, knocking out power and cell service, sweeping away homes and killed at least 227 people. State DOTs are assessing the state of their infrastructure as FEMA continues search and rescue and other emergency support.
The Category 4 storm was the deadliest hurricane to hit the continental United States since Katrina in 2005, and the rebuilding needs, which are still gathering pace, will be massive.
Western North Carolina suffered the worst of the damage, and Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia and Florida, where it first made landfall on September 26, are also dealing with the aftermath. The wide-ranging storm knocked out power in those states, as well as Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia.
Many Floridians, still reeling from Helene, are fleeing another Category 4 storm and The Florida DOT is reeling from the recovery in preparation Fast-growing Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday and looks set to be one of the worst to hit the area in 100 years.
Reconstruction will be expensive
Preliminary estimates put the cost of rebuilding Helene in the tens of billions: on the lower end there are $30.5 to $47.5 billion, from CoreLogica financial and consumer analytics company based in California, while forecasting company AccuWeather pegs it at 225 to 250 billion dollars. Many of the affected homes are not insuredaccording to climate news site Grist.
President Joe Biden on Friday called on Congress to quickly replenish disaster relief funds to help them. As of Monday, FEMA says it has provided more than $210 million in emergency aid in the affected areas of Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia for items such as food, generators and tarps.
The federal government is sending another one $100 million to repair and reopen roads and bridges damaged by Helene in western North Carolina, the Federal Highway Administration said Saturday, as well as $32 million in aid for Tennessee i $2 million for South Carolina. It remains to be seen where the funding for the rest of the repairs will come from.
Aerial view of a vehicle passing a stretch of road washed away by flooding caused by Hurricane Helene on October 3 in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
Mario Tama via Getty Images
Here’s an overview of the infrastructure that was damaged:
Roads and bridges
Hundreds of roads remain closed as a result of Helene, according to the New York Times, and washouts, mudslides and debris cut off many routes in the Appalachian Mountains. Three bridges were washed away in southwest Virginia.
Perhaps the most consequential destruction is on I-40, where a mudslide and raging water ripped apart the portion of the highway connecting western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. repair roads and bridges near the North Carolina-Tennessee border it could take months and promises to be a major political and planning challenge, according to the New York Times.
As of Tuesday, 734 of the state’s highways were closed closed or impassable due to hurricaneaccording to the North Carolina DOT, and the Tennessee DOT says many routes in the eastern part of the state they require major repairs and others need to be completely rebuilt.
Electricity network and mobile phone towers
Helene knocked out power for nearly 6 million customers in 10 states, according to the Edison Electric Institute, which represents the investor-owned utilities. Many electrical networks need repairs and lots of them others must be completely rebuiltaccording to Utility Dive.
In North Carolina, 111,102 customers are still without poweraccording to PowerOutage tracking, as did approximately 60,000 homes in Georgia and 21,000 in South Carolina. Utilities say they can’t estimate restoration times, in some cases, because roads are impassable and grids need to be rebuilt, according to Utility Dive.
The storm also destroyed cell phone towers, cutting communication for potentially millions of people, according to USA Today.
Water, sewer and dams
Helene’s flooding severely damaged water infrastructureincluding sewer systems, wastewater treatment plants, dams and pipelines that provide drinking water to residents of North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.
Above and below ground water systems were destroyed in western North Carolina, and officials in the area said repairs could take several weeks, according to the New York Times. Some in the east Counties in Tennessee also lost clean water supply when their treatment plants were damaged.
Nolichucky Dam near Greeneville, Tennessee and Walters and North Carolina’s Lake Lure the dams were about to failforcing the evacuation of nearby communities. Although the dams were ultimately maintained, the incident illustrates how many of the structures are unprepared for an era of extreme weather and poses an imminent risk of failure.
railway
The storm blocked rail lines in the affected states with downed trees and other debris. In particular, Helene flooded tracks and damaged bridges on CSX routes in the Carolinas, according to Railway Track and Structures, and Norfolk Southern is also dealing with downed power lines.
A lane of Main Street is washed away by water after Hurricane Helene on September 30 in Old Fort, North Carolina.
Melissa Sue Gerrits via Getty Images
Helene highlights the vulnerabilities
Hurricane Helene illustrates how unprepared America’s communities and infrastructure are for the extreme weather brought on by climate change.
In particular, Helene hit communities that had been considered relatively safe from extreme weather. For example, it devastated Asheville, North Carolina, located nearly 500 miles from where the hurricane made landfall considered a climate refuge.
The world’s climate is changing faster than building codes are being updated. The minimum standards of the National Flood Insurance Program (the basis of flood codes across the country) have not been updated in 46 years, and the The United States also lacks consistent flood design standards for infrastructure, according to Chad Berginnis, executive director of the State Floodplain Managers Association.
Marsia Geldert-Murphey, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, said in a press release that Helene is a reminder of the importance of Adoption of updated building codes and standards.
“As someone who has experienced losing everything in a catastrophic flood event, I have seen firsthand the need to make communities more resilient and the consequences of not doing so,” Geldert-Murphey told the communicated “Extreme weather events and 500-year floods are increasing in regularity and our aging infrastructure systems were not built to withstand storms of this magnitude.”
