Floridians, Georgians, Alabamians, and Carolinians braced for Hurricane Helene as it made landfall in the evening hours of Thursday, Sept. 26. Traveling through the Big Bend region—between Tallahassee, Florida and Tampa, Florida—Helene hit category 4 speeds of 140 mph, resulting in flooding and damages across the state. In a Sept. 27 press release, Kevin Guthrie of the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Governor Ron DeSantis wrote of 98 health facilities having been evacuated and 54 relying on generator power. Major highways along the Gulf Coast were also closed due to flooding or blockages, such as Interstate 75 from the Georgia-Florida state line to Fort Myers, Florida.
Per a Sept. 30 report from the University of South Florida’s student radio station, WUSF, residential property damage was estimated at over half a billion dollars in the Tampa Bay region with nearly 5,000 properties being affected in Manatee (Bradenton, Florida) and Pinellas (St. Petersburg, Florida) counties alone.
Further north, in Georgia, damage to the power grid was even worse. In Valdosta, Georgia, residents estimated they would be without electricity for weeks. Governor Brian Kemp reported that over 115 buildings had been damaged in the town, with people trapped within. He also announced that over 1,300 stoplights had been downed due to wind gusts reaching 100 mph. Meanwhile, Atlanta experienced record rainfall at 11.1 inches that same day, per the Office of the State Climatologist.
The damage so far from the Gulf Coast has been attributed to the hurricane’s acceleration as it approached the United States, with its velocity accelerating from 10 to 30 mph by the National Hurricane Center’s recordings.
Helene also affected, most dramatically, the Appalachian region of North Carolina. In Asheville, Interstate 40 crumbled, leaving many in the area without an escape route. Flooding in the mountainous region devastated the homes of residents, many of whom do not have insurance covering such damages. Communication networks in the region were also knocked out, with 370 cell towers being taken out along the hurricane path, being the most since 2017.
The western North Carolina damage has also been of particular interest to market skeptics, whose top company Nvidia could be indirectly affected by the hurricane. Spruce Pine is home to the Sibelco quartz mine, whose ultra-pure deposits go into silicon wafers. These wafers are mass produced and turned into microchips by companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which are ordered by technology hardware companies. This trade system has been threatened by Helene’s destruction: while Sibelco reported minimal damage to the site on Oct. 3, the mine is still without power, and highway and rail routes are still not usable.
While the economic impacts remain to be fully realized, the effect of lost lives has already been felt throughout the Southeast. An estimate by NBC News puts the death toll at 223 as of Oct. 4, while even more are unaccounted for. To support local agencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has over 1,000 bureau employees in the region and is working to send nearly 5,000 more volunteers. The response has elicited questions from political pundits and officeholders, but for the time being, it seems all organizations have been committed to the Hurricane Helene response.
