Historic floods brought on by Hurricane Helene are receding across the southeast US, leading to massive humanitarian, financial and ecological problems that are expected to continue over the next several years.
Ripe cotton fields have been devastated. Sewage and factory chemicals have spilled into the distended rivers. Essential elements of the power infrastructure have been decimated. Bird populations in some of the leading states for poultry production have been drowned. Quartz mines responsible for delivering high-grade material for computer chips remain out of operation.
Human life losses continue to rise, with over 180 confirmed fatalities in six states and an untold number displaced. According to the US government, there are 29 active relief centres, housing over 1,000 people.
The storm swept 35cm of rain in three days over western North Carolina, causing landslides and turning creeks into raging rivers.
Asheville, the most populous city in the flood-affected area, had recently gained a reputation as a sanctuary from climate changes. It’s been attracting inhabitants from areas more susceptible to storms. But even Asheville has not been spared, as storm Helene knocked out its national data centre for environmental records.
In remarkable devastation within Georgia’s Augusta, Kamala Harris, the vice-president, arrived personally to access the destruction on a Wednesday visit. On the same trip, Harris confirmed, “this community has suffered particularly in terms of loss of life, loss of regularity, and loss of vital resources.”
While Augusta hasn’t garnered as much national focus as western North Carolina, with its badly damaged roads and extreme flooding, the majority of Augusta’s residents haven’t had electricity since Friday morning. With trees completely littering the streets, some people have been trapped in their houses for days. Every main road of the city was lined by uprooted trees. Trees alongside the heart of the city have been ripped from the sidewalk and left horizontally, having torn through four inches of concrete.
The region has previously faced the harsh realities of hurricane devastation. However, the extent of the destruction brought about by Hurricane Helene, especially far from the coastal lines in the mountains and inland fields, took many off guard. The harvest destroyed by this catastrophe alone is projected to lead to insurance disbursements of around $7 billion or €6.3 billion, as predicted by a U.S. agricultural department official.
State’s agriculture commissioner, Tyler Harper, voiced concerns over the future of numerous farming operations throughout Georgia, in a letter penned to the state’s congressional delegation in the recent week. The pressure of this calamity “could not have arrived at a more inconvenient point for our agriculturists and producers,” who are presently grappling with historically low net farm profits instigated by inflation, exorbitant operational costs, labour scarcity, worldwide competition, and depreciated commodity rates.
The advent of climate change is shaking weather patterns around the globe, leading to notoriously hot ocean temperatures that stimulate intense, lethal hurricanes. Helene followed the wreckage caused by Hurricanes Beryl and Debby earlier in the year.
Helene made landfall late last Thursday in Florida, punctuated by formidable winds of 225 km/h (140mph), before proceeding northward into the Appalachian Mountains. The precinct had been inundated by a surge of moisture from the storm well before it made ground, saturating the earth and setting the stage for potential flooding across numerous states.
Parts of the southeast worked feverishly to rebuild access routes and restore electricity. At the height of the storm, electrical services to more than four million residential and commercial structures were disconnected, and while power was reinstated in many locations quite rapidly, advancements have been dauntingly slow within the severely impacted mountainous areas and foothills. Georgia Power deemed Helene as the most ruinous hurricane in the firm’s chronicles, causing damage to 1,200 of its transformers – devices that transmute high-voltage power coursing through transmittal lines into the lesser voltage used domestically.
As states scramble to re-establish communities and provide accommodation for those who were dislocated, the assessment of Helene’s environmental impact has also begun. Flooding of wastewater systems resulted in the discharge of several million gallons of sewage, while a phosphate factory near the shores of Tampa Bay in Florida allowed hundreds of poundage of ammonia to escape. A few hundred spills have been reported to state environmental authorities across Florida to North Carolina following the downpour with over 30cm (12in) of rain over industrial zones, paper mills, and factories in the aftermath of the storm.
“Gray Jernigan, the Chief Legal Advisor for the environmental organisation, MountainTrue, reported witnessing the disastrous flooding of Asheville’s French Broad river in North Carolina, leading to significant damage in the city’s river arts district. The spilled chemicals, fuel and gas from industrial sites entering the river mark a severe environmental concern,” he warned.
The situation was aggravated with a retired nuclear plant and a coal-fueled power station, owned by Duke, being inundated by flood waters. The surge height reached up to 3.6 meters (12 feet), as claimed by the firm on September 27th in a report to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. Furthermore, in the same document, it was noted that an overflow from a wastewater pond at the facility reached the ground, caused by the surge.
In the meantime, the city of Tampa struggled to cope with storm surges overwhelming the system. Kathlyn Fitzpatrick, the city’s spokesperson, informed that 8.5 million gallons of sewage was subsequently released. “Most of the pollutants ended up in the bay, a predicament which we were unable to prevent,” she regretfully mentioned.
The aftermath of the flood saw water levels of the region’s French Broad river slowly decreasing by the following Tuesday afternoon. The city reported the highest water level at 8.1m (over 24½ft), surpassing the previous record set in 1916 by 46cm or 18 inches.
Clay Chaney, a national weather service meteorologist based in Greer, South Carolina, prophesied, “Regrettably, this flood will set a new benchmark.” — Bloomberg/Agencies