Women embrace Sept. 28, 2024, as Dave (no last name provided) looks at the remains of his destroyed house in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., following Hurricane Helene. (OSV News photo/Marco Bello, Reuters)

Helene causes massive flooding, damage, deaths

By early evening Sept. 26, Hurricane Helene had garnered major hurricane status just before making landfall along the Florida Panhandle beginning late that night into Sept. 27.

As Florida prepared for the massive Hurricane Helene to make landfall along the state’s Gulf Coast the evening of Sept. 26, Bishop William A. Wack of Pensacola-Tallahassee livestreamed his personal reflection and prayer.

He encouraged people who had not evacuated to “find a safe spot and hunker down.”

“The one good thing about this storm — and there aren’t many good things, it’s a huge one, it’s a monster of a storm — is that it’s going fast, 23, 25 miles an hour. That’s what you want. You don’t want it to linger over the land. You want it to move,” he said during the livestream.

Helene is being described as one of the largest storms in the Gulf of Mexico in the last century, with a wind field that could span roughly the distance between Indianapolis and Washington.

Extensive flooding has been reported around the southwest Florida-Gulf Coast regions well south of Hurricane Helene’s landfall in the Big Bend area of the Florida Panhandle, including Naples, Fort Myers Beach, Sarasota, and northward along the St. Petersburg-Tampa Bay regions before impacting other states in the South, including Georgia and beyond.

By late afternoon Sept. 27, the huge storm was downgraded to a tropical depression. The New York Times reported that destruction from Helene stretched nearly 800 miles from South Florida into the mountains of Appalachia, where heavy rain triggered mudslides.

The storm is being blamed for the deaths of at least 100 people in four states — Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — after Hurricane Helene made landfall and moved inland with high winds and heavy rainfall, according to The Weather Channel. 

The St. Petersburg Diocesan Hurricane Task Force had been in constant communication in the days leading up to and after the storm according to St. Petersburg Bishop Gregory L. Parkes, who decided to close all Catholic schools and Early Childhood Centers in Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for the remainder of the week.

Helene’s eyewall came ashore in what was a fairly rural area, according to Matthew F. Knee, president and CEO of Catholic Charities of Northwest Florida and a resident of the Panhandle since 2014.

The dioceses of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Orlando, Venice, St. Augustine and St. Petersburg were among those Thursday canceling Catholic schools and closing facilities in advance of Hurricane Helene, while emergency supplies were being staged in at least five regions of the Panhandle, according to Knee.

Based at the Northwest Florida Catholic Charities headquarters in Pensacola, Knee said he planned to ride out the storm there until it becomes safe to get out into the community to check on property and damages.

“My office will (then) be in my car for sure after we work out logistics and until after the storm passes, then start making the rounds to see what the needs are in the community,” he told OSV News. “We rely heavily on the six other Catholic Charities chapters across the state and they all support each other during storms.”

In western North Carolna, relief efforts are under way to help communities reeling from the impacts of Tropical Storm Helene.

Unprecedented flooding from the storm swamped municipal water systems, washed away roads and downed utility lines — leaving many mountain communities cut off Sept. 27 and in critical need of emergency aid. At one point, authorities closed 400 roads deeming them unsafe for travel. AP reported Sept. 30 that supplies were being airlifted to the region around the isolated city of Asheville.

Parishioners, clergy and staff across the Diocese of Charlotte are rallying to provide help — uniting in prayer, raising money and collecting — and delivering — relief supplies.

The diocese has also organized a drive to take emergency supplies from Charlotte to affected areas. An initial truckload of supplies was delivered Sept. 29 to Immaculate Conception Church in Hendersonville, where the community was in need of water, according to staff reports.

In Hendersonville, flooding and leaks from the roof and windows at Immaculata School inundated multiple classrooms, the gym and its new STEM lab. 

Immaculata School will remain closed this week Sept. 30-Oct. 4, and officials will reassess the situation as soon as utilities are working again, the school announced.

“Friday was a tough day,” Immaculata’s principal Margaret Beale said, “and it’s really frustrating for a school that has gained so much momentum. But then you get on the other side of the storm and you see how horrific the damage is, you realize you are blessed. There isn’t anything that’s happened at our parish or school that can’t be repaired. We are such a strong community that we’ll come back from this.”

OSV News

OSV News is a national and international wire service reporting on Catholic news.

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