AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Hurricane Helene has left a path of destruction from Tampa to Tennessee, and the scope of the damage still isn't totally clear. NPR's Frank Morris has been reporting on the storm and joins us now from St. Petersburg, Fla. Good morning.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: Morning, Ayesha.
RASCOE: Frank, a horrible reality of this storm is the human toll. What can you tell us about those killed?
MORRIS: Well, the death toll keeps going up, but we know that at least 64 people have been killed, and those are incidents spread out across several states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, so it's an enormous area. Some people are crushed by falling trees. Some are crushed by their own collapsing homes. Some died in car crashes related to the storm. Some drowned in flash floods. There are - many of the deaths were many miles from the coastline. The National Weather Service says that inland flooding is usually a leading cause of death in hurricanes, and that was especially true with Helene.
RASCOE: Is this the worst of the weather - or is the worst of the weather associated with the storm over?
MORRIS: Oh, yeah, technically, yes, Helene has fallen apart as a storm, but the remnants are still causing rain. Of course, that's falling on saturated ground in a lot of places. Flash flood warnings, even a couple of flash flood emergencies are still in effect. Hundreds of roads are closed across Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee. Part of I-40 is washed out and closed indefinitely, and a lot of people may be stranded. Rescue crews were out last night, responding to calls, looking for people who are still unaccounted for. And more than 2 million homes and businesses spanning this huge area from Florida to Indiana are waiting to get power restored. Looking at 15 to $25 billion worth of property damage - and, of course, people are still coming to grips with having their lives turned upside down.
RASCOE: You're in St. Petersburg, closer to where the storm made landfall. What's the damage like there?
MORRIS: Ayesha, I spent some time with a couple I want to introduce you to. This was a little ways up the coast at Hernando Beach. Their experience is telling in terms of what you see down here on the Gulf Coast of Florida. There's just a lot of grief and shock.
BARBRA DEWEY: Oh, my God.
KEVIN COLLINS: Well...
DEWEY: Jeez. The whole - it was high. Yeah. It was definitely high.
COLLINS: It is what it is.
MORRIS: Hurricane Helene pushed 5 feet of angry water through the house Kevin Collins and Barbra Dewey bought just last November.
COLLINS: This is a total disaster. It's just - water's powerful.
MORRIS: Collins and Dewey bought this cute 1960s one-story, two-bedroom place on the water in Hernando Beach, Fla., after visiting from New York.
DEWEY: I was like, I love it here. Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful. I was like, I want to live here. And so we drove around - I'm telling you, a year, OK? - looking for places. You know, we had five things that we had to have, and it had it, and I was like, that's it; let's go.
COLLINS: Now everything in their dream home is a smelly mess. The kitchen counters are buckling, the floors muddy, and it's littered with waterlogged furniture, ruined electronics and broken treasures.
COLLINS: That glass thing, that was my mother's. It was a fish. The water came up. It was up there, and it flipped over.
DEWEY: It was a home, right or wrong, you know? You can't wait to come home, and it was very nicely done. And it took a long time, and we got it together and shaped it up, and it was a home. And now we lost our home.
MORRIS: They don't have insurance. Collins says he didn't even try to get a policy. He figures it would cost him $20,000 a year if he could find a company to write one here. They're planning to rebuild, but it's not an easy decision because they know this is going to happen again.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Frank Morris. Thank you so much for bringing us that reporting from Florida.
MORRIS: Thank you, Ayesha. Have a good one. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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