Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 44 people in four states, snapping trees like twigs, tearing apart homes and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters. Among those killed were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

The Category 4 hurricane knocked out power to some hospitals in southern Georgia, and Gov. Brian Kemp said authorities used chainsaws to clear debris and open up roads. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida’s rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet. Moody’s Analytics said Friday it expects $15 to $26 billion in property damage.

In North Carolina, a lake overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed. Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia's Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. The previous mark of 9.59 inches (24.36 cm) was set in 1886. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water. Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours.

All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents had been told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. He said some who stayed because they didn’t believe the warnings had to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. “We tried to launch boats, we tried to use high-water vehicles and we just met with too many obstacles,” Gualtieri said. He said the death toll could rise as emergency crews go door-to-door in the flooded areas.

President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency has deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late morning. In Tampa, some areas could be reached only by boat. In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to the state's utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of homes and businesses were without power, said crews needed to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.