Hurricane Helene leaves at least 69 dead as losses of a lifetime devastate residents

Desperate residents of the storm-battered mountains of western North Carolina lined up for water and food, hunted for cellphone signals and slogged buckets from creeks to flush toilets days after Hurricane Helene’s remnants deluged the region.

The devastation was especially bad in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where at least 40 people died in and around the city of Asheville, a tourism haven known for its art galleries, breweries and outdoor activities.

Helene, which crunched into the western Florida coast as a category 4 hurricane on Thursday, brought darkly familiar carnage to a stretch of that state that has experienced three such storms in the past 13 months, flattening coastal homes and tossing boats inland.

The ferocious storm- one of the worst in US history - has already killed more than 100 people in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia, with the death toll expected to rise once rescue teams reach isolated towns and emergency telecommunications assets come online.