Rescuers in 4 states race to help people after deadly Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 30 people in four states, snapping trees like twigs, tearing apart homes, and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.

According to an Associated Press tally Friday, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said dozens of people were still trapped in buildings damaged by the Category 4 hurricane. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida's rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet.

But the damage extended hundreds of miles to the north, with flooding as far away as North Carolina, where a lake used in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam. Multiple hospitals in southern Georgia were without power, and one in Tennessee was closed.

Authorities were “having a hard time getting to places" so teams with chainsaws were "working to free up roads,” Kemp told a news conference.

Helene’s devastation comes as climate change exacerbates conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours.