Southeast US reels as storm Helene death toll passes 210

Helene is now the deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland since Katrina nearly 20 years ago. [Courtesy ABCNews]

More than 210 people are now confirmed dead after Hurricane Helene carved a path of destruction through several US states, officials said Thursday, making it the second deadliest storm to hit the US mainland in more than half a century.

US President Joe Biden made his second straight day of visits to the country's southeast to grieve with residents of a region traumatized by a disaster that has upended life for millions.

The storm flooded towns and cities, made countless roads impassable, knocked out power and water service, and left communities shell-shocked as they grappled with the start of a years-long recovery effort.

A compilation of official figures by AFP confirms 212 fatalities across North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.

More than half of the deaths were in flood-ravaged North Carolina, which is experiencing an unprecedented disaster described by some as post-apocalyptic.

"I see you, I hear you, I grieve with you -- and I promise you, we have your back," Biden said during a stop at a damaged pecan farm in Ray City, Georgia.

Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the US mainland since 2005's Katrina, which killed 1,392 people.

Despite hundreds of rescues across six states and an enormous response including thousands of federal personnel and thousands more National Guard members and active-duty troops assisting local responders, the death toll from the sprawling storm is expected to rise.

Many residents are still unaccounted for in a mountainous region known for its pockets of isolation.

"We are continuing to find survivors," North Carolina's Buncombe County, the epicentre of the tragedy where more than 70 people are confirmed dead, said in its latest update, adding there are residents still cut off from the outside world due to landslides and destroyed bridges.

In Asheville, a city of about 100,000 at the foot of picturesque mountains, and popular with tourists, thick mud covers streets. Buildings and other structures along riverbanks have been washed away.

Authorities are pursuing their desperate search for survivors in remote areas, while downtown, restaurants and aid groups are providing free food and water. Repair crews are struggling to restore power to hundreds of thousands of customers still without electricity.

In the nearby town of Swannanoa, neighbours bound together in misery or despair were looking after one another, cleaning up roads, fixing power lines, distributing gas and sharing meals.

"We're all sticking together. Everybody's helping each other," resident Shelby Holzhauser told AFP.

Families 'lost everything'

Biden travelled Thursday to Florida's northern Gulf Coast, where Helene roared ashore last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour.

He took an aerial tour of the devastation and then walked past rows of destroyed homes in Keaton Beach, near where the storm made landfall.

Homes were "just wiped away, just an entire island gone," Biden said afterwards while visiting Georgia.

"Families, they lost everything, including loved ones," he added and pledged the full support of the federal government in helping communities recover.

Researchers say climate change likely plays a role in the rapid intensification of storms because there is more energy in a warmer ocean for them to feed on.

Biden said Wednesday while touring North Carolina that a person "must be brain-dead" to deny the climate crisis and its impact.

Former president Donald Trump, who is running neck-and-neck against Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election, meanwhile lashed out Thursday with falsehoods about Washington's storm response.

"People are dying all over and they're getting no help from our federal government," Trump said in a dark campaign speech in Michigan, suggesting wrongly that the Biden-Harris administration has no federal funds to help storm-battered states "because they spent it all on illegal migrants."

He has also called climate change a hoax.

The Sierra Club said Helene fed off record-warm water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, supercharging the storm's power.

"Make no mistake: the unimaginable devastation we're seeing across the Southeast is the climate crisis in action," warned executive director Ben Jealous.