Helene Is Now Deadliest U.S. Hurricane Since Katrina

Hurricane Helene passed the grim milestone of 200 fatalities on Thursday to become the deadliest hurricane on U.S. soil since Katrina devastated New Orleans nearly two decades ago, which left 1,392 people dead.

That chilling casualty count is far from done growing, officials warn, with there still being hundreds of people unaccounted for in the mountain towns of western North Carolina.

The official death toll as of Thursday afternoon was 202. Nearly half of the fatalities came from North Carolina, where some small towns were almost entirely washed away by fast-moving flood waters.

“There’s several missing people—a dozen or more that know, that we saw swept away—that we haven’t located,” Rowan County Sheriff Travis Allen told MSNBC on Thursday. “So I think as the days go on, this number is going to get drastically worse.”

Katrina killed 1,400 people when it inundated New Orleans on Aug. 25, 2005, causing $125 billion in damage. Helene’s devastation has been forecasted to cost tens of billions of dollars, with some estimates, such as AccuWeather’s, predicting the total cost could be as high as $160 billion.

Helene destroyed key infrastructure in western North Carolina, including its major highways, which has hindered relief and recovery efforts. Much of Asheville and its surrounding communities remain without power six days after Helene’s winds and rains first arrived on Friday afternoon.