Hurricane Helene passed the grim milestone of 200 fatalities on Thursday to become the deadliest hurricane on U.S. soil since Katrina devastated New Orleans nearly two decades ago, which left 1,392 people dead.
That chilling casualty count is far from done growing, officials warn, with there still being hundreds of people unaccounted for in the mountain towns of western North Carolina.
The official death toll as of Thursday afternoon was 202. Nearly half of the fatalities came from North Carolina, where some small towns were almost entirely washed away by fast-moving flood waters.
