As Search for Helene’s Victims Drags Into 2nd Week, Sheriff Says Rescuers ‘Will Not Rest’

PENSACOLA, N.C.—The search for victims of Hurricane Helene dragged into its second week on Friday, as exhausted rescue crews and volunteers continued to work long days—navigating past washed out roads, downed power lines, and mudslides—to reach the isolated and the missing.
“We know these are hard times, but please know we’re coming,” Sheriff Quentin Miller of Buncombe County, North Carolina, said at a Thursday evening press briefing. “We’re coming to get you. We’re coming to pick up our people.”
With at least 215 killed, Helene is already the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005, and dozens or possibly hundreds of people are still unaccounted for. Roughly half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in South Carolina and Georgia….