Hurricane Helenes devastation can be seen from space in dramatic blackout images
Hurricane Helene’s path of devastation is so vast it can be seen from orbit. Satellite images taken after the storm show an area of blackout where residents have lost power spreading across five states.Around 1.2 million customers are without power in Georgia and the Carolinas as of Wednesday.
Thousands more remain in the dark in Florida and Virginia.The lack of city lights made the American Southeast look like North Korea, as homes and businesses remain without power.Within that darkness, crews slog through muck and debris to re-hang power lines and rebuild fallen cellular towers.Meanwhile, residents cook food on charcoal and gas stoves, huddle around generators to charge their phones, and hike up mountainsides in search of a signal.In Augusta, Georgia, Sherry Brown converted power from her car’s alternator to keep her refrigerator running.
She has been taking “bird baths” with water collected in coolers.In another part of the city, people waited in line more than three hours to get water from one of five centers set up to serve more than 200,000 people.Cliff Stewart survived two feet of water that poured into his home.
Left without electricity and reliant on food drop-offs from friends, he has refused offers to help him leave.“Where am I going to go?” the Marine Corps veteran said.“This is all I’ve got.
I just don’t want to give it up, because what am I going to do? Be homeless? I’d rather die right here than live homeless.”For days, more than 20 acute care hospitals in western North Carolina relied on backup generators to keep their patients alive, although they have since been reconnected to the grid, the state health department said.Meanwhile, downed towers and damaged fiber cables have left communities throughout the region without cell service or internet.“People are walking the streets of Canton with their phones up in the air trying to catch a cellphone signal like it’s a butterfly,” said Mayor Zeb Smathers, of Canton, Nort...