At least 33 dead as Helene cuts path through southeastern U.S.

Hurricane Helene brought life-threatening flooding on Friday to wide sections of the U.S. Southeast, where at least 33 people have been killed by a storm that swamped neighborhoods, triggered mudslides, threatened dams, and left more than 4 million homes and businesses without power.

In Tennessee, fears that a dam would fail near the city of Newport prompted officials to order the evacuation of the downtown area. Another dam in North Carolina was on the brink of failure.

Before moving north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida's Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday at 11:10 p.m. ET packing 225 kph winds. It left behind a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbors, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.

As of early Friday afternoon, the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression with maximum sustained winds of 55 kph, the National Hurricane Center said.

But Helene's heavy rains were still producing catastrophic flooding in many areas, with police and firefighters carrying out thousands of water rescues throughout the affected states.

More than 50 people were trapped on the roof of a hospital at midday on Friday in Unicoi County, Tennessee, about 190 kilometers northeast of Knoxville, as floodwaters swamped the rural community. State officials later said those people were safely rescued.

Rising waters from the Nolichucky River were preventing ambulances and emergency vehicles from evacuating patients and others there, the Unicoi County Emergency Management Agency said on social media. Emergency crews in boats and helicopters were conducting rescues.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, Rob Mathis, the mayor of Cocke County, wrote on social media that the Walters dam "has suffered a catastrophic failure" and that the downtown area of the nearby city of Newport, with 36,000 people, would evacuate.

However, the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency wrote on social media that the Walters dam, which is located just across state lines in North Carolina, had not failed. The agency said that information came from Duke Energy, which operates the dam.

Madison McDonald, a Duke Energy spokesperson, said, "we are aware of the situation and we're sorting out the facts."

In western North Carolina, Rutherford County emergency officials warned residents near the Lake Lure Dam to immediately evacuate to higher ground, saying "Dam failure imminent."

In nearby Buncombe County, landslides forced interstates 40 and 26 to close, the county said on X.