by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall St On Parade:

As desperate and traumatized residents of Western North Carolina have learned over the past week, everything Americans thought they knew about storm threats must now be reexamined. Some Western North Carolina counties located 485 miles north of where Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on September 26 in Florida’s Big Bend area have reported more deaths than the entire state of Florida.

At yesterday’s press briefing in Buncombe County, North Carolina, Sheriff Quentin Miller reported that the death toll for his county from Hurricane Helene had reached 61; that’s four times the 14 Hurricane Helene-related deaths that the state of Florida is reporting.