The death toll from Hurricane Helene in the US has risen to 189 as of October 2 and is expected to rise as hundreds of people remain missing, the New York Post reported.
The updated toll makes Helene the deadliest storm to hit the US since Hurricane Katrina claimed 1,392 lives in 2005 across six southern US states.
North Carolina — one of the hardest hit by severe flooding from Hurricane Helene — lost 95 people. South Carolina had 39 deaths; Georgia had 25 deaths; Florida had 19 deaths; Tennessee had nine deaths; and Virginia had two deaths, according to CNN's tally.
Among those killed by Hurricane Helene were rescue workers and civil servants on duty as the storm struck the United States.
Hundreds of people are still missing, suggesting the death toll from Hurricane Helene will continue to rise.
In North Carolina's Buncombe County alone, at least 600 people were listed as missing as of October 1, with much of the mountainous region still cut off, roads and bridges washed away by floodwaters and telecommunications nearly impossible due to widespread power outages.
Across the South, especially in the Appalachian regions of Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina, the situation is similar.
Even after bodies are recovered from the rubble, the death toll from Hurricane Helene could continue to rise in the coming years, with the number possibly reaching into the thousands, according to a study published on October 2 in the journal Nature.
Research shows that powerful storms like Hurricane Helene could directly cause between 7,000 and 11,000 deaths over the next 15 years.
The study looked at mortality rates following 501 tropical storms between 1930 and 1950 and found that lost income and health problems arising directly from storms led to an “unrecorded mortality burden” that accounted for more than 5.1 percent of all deaths along the US Atlantic coast.
