Nearly 100 Still Missing In North Carolina After Hurricane Helene

Topline

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday confirmed 92 people from North Carolina are still missing nearly three weeks after Hurricane Helene—the deadliest hurricane to hit the United States since Katrina in 2005—swept the Southeast, killing hundreds and leaving an unknown number of people still unaccounted for across the region.

Key Facts

Cooper’s update comes days after officials in North Carolina, the state hit hardest by Helene, said they were still working to total the number of missing person reports received by various agencies during the storm.

The governor said “significant progress” has been made by first responders working on recovery efforts—Rutherford County officials, for example, said more than 1,100 people initially reported missing have been located and confirmed safe—but that work is continuing.

In Buncombe County, home to the hard-hit city of Asheville, roughly 20 public school children remained unaccounted for Monday, Superintendent Rob Jackson told the Asheville Citizen-Times.

More than 220 people in six southeastern states—North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Virginia—died from Hurricane Helene and that number is likely to continue to rise.

The number of missing people across the region is still unknown (most states and counties have not publicly reported the information).

The American Red Cross has received more than 11,000 reunification requests from family members searching for loved ones, the agency said, but did not say how many of those requests have been resolved.

Big Number

981. That's how many missing people have been reported to volunteer Ellie Erickson, who created a Google spreadsheet to keep track of those reported missing. Erickson has collected information from those who've reached out to report loved ones missing and updates the sheet when someone is found, according to People. Those still listed as missing are mostly from North Carolina but the list also includes people from Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. The spreadsheet also lists 2,823 people who have been found.

Surprising Fact

Eleven people from one North Carolina family were killed in Fairview, North Carolina in a mudslide brought on by Hurricane Helene. The Craig family, who have lived in the Appalachian Mountain community for 80 years, lost almost a dozen members when a mudslide swept through a valley. Survivor Jesse Craig told Fox News he lost both his parents, two cousins, an aunt and uncle, his great aunt and uncle and three other relatives.

Tangent

In his update Tuesday, Cooper also asked North Carolina residents to stop participating in a "persistent and dangerous flow of misinformation" that is hampering recovery efforts. False stories about the conditions in North Carolina—like rumors 2,000 people were trapped in a church and 1,000 unidentified dead bodies were piled up at a hospital in Asheville—have taken off on social media and Buncombe County spokeswoman Lillian Govus said the lies take away "time and resources from us being able to do those critical lifesaving maneuvers in our community.” Misinformation has also been a problem on the federal level as President Donald Trump and his allies spread lies about the hurricane response. They falsely claimed the Federal Emergency Management Agency couldn’t respond appropriately to the storm because it diverted so much money to helping migrants, and billionaire Trump supporter Elon Musk falsely claimed on X that FEMA was not allowing supplies to be delivered. On Monday, a man in North Carolina was arrested for allegedly threatening to harm FEMA workers in North Carolina.

Key Background

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend area at around 11:10 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 26 as a Category 4 storm. It moved north quickly through Georgia before reaching the Tennessee/North Carolina border, where as much as two feet of rain caused catastrophic flooding in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Flooding and landslides took out thousands of roads, including the major highways I-40 and I-26 that are still closed and will need extensive repairs before they can reopen. Fox Weather reported over the weekend that the Helene death toll has climbed to more than 250 with 123 deaths in North Carolina, though the state has confirmed only 95 deaths as of Monday. Officials said Thursday they are aware of other deaths and are working to confirm they were caused by the storm.

Further Reading