Hurricane Helene death toll tops 100 in US

New York, Sep 30 (IANS) The United States has posted more than 100 deaths related to Hurricane Helene as of Sunday, according to local news.

In particular, North Carolina reported 37 deaths while South Carolina registered 27 fatalities, reports Xinhua news agency, quoting The New York Times.

Buncombe County in Western North Carolina had 30 people killed from the storm, with over 500 unaccounted for as of early Sunday afternoon, according to Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller.

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper encouraged people to donate to the North Carolina Disaster Relief Fund to help communities recover from catastrophic damage caused by the storm.

"There is a massive effort underway to get help to the people of Western North Carolina, including state and federal relief, but we know there will be additional needs," Cooper said.

US President Joe Biden declared that a "major disaster" exists in Florida and North Carolina on Saturday and ordered federal aid to assist local recovery from the hurricane's impacts.

The United States still had over 2 million electric customers without power supply as of Sunday night, according to PowerOutage.us, a website that tracks and records power outages across the country.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida's Big Bend area Thursday night as a Category 4 and continued to wreak havoc, though it weakened afterwards.