PENSACOLA, N.C. — Rescue crews and volunteers facing obstacles at every turn in North Carolina’s remote mountains paddled canoes across swollen rivers and steered horses past mudslides in the rush to reach those stranded or missing by Hurricane Helene’s rampage that killed more than 200 throughout the Southeast.
Now a week since the storm first roared onto Florida’s Gulf Coast, the search continued for people who have yet to be heard from in places where phone service and electricity were knocked out. Pleas for help came from people running low on medicine or in need of fuel for their generators.
How many people are missing or unaccounted for isn’t clear. The death toll grew to 215 people on Thursday as more victims were found, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.
About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in South Carolina and Georgia.
Dominick Gucciardo walks to his home Thursday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Pensacola, N.C.
Along the Cane River in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains, rescuers from the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department cut their way through trees at the top of a valley where a wall of water swept through for hours last week.
Pensacola, which sits a few miles from Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi River, lost an untold number of people, said Mark Harrison, chief medical officer for the department.
“We’re starting to do recovery,” he said Thursday. “We’ve got the most critical people out.”
Harrison helped dispatch volunteers driving all-terrain vehicles on supply runs to people still on ridgetops. Many don’t want to leave their houses, while others lost their vehicles and need help getting to town.
Bradley Billheimer, who hiked down to the fire station to access the internet, said he just talked to his mom for the first time since the storm. He feared his house will be without power for months.
“I think we’re going to walk out in a couple of days,” he said.
A man makes a call Thursday on the wireless system set up by the volunteer fire department in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Pensacola, N.C.
In another county that sits alongside the Tennessee state line, crews just finished clearing main routes and reached side roads that wind through switchbacks and cross small bridges that can be tricky to navigate even in the best weather. Each road presented a new challenge.
“Everything is fine and then they come around a bend and the road is gone and it’s one big gully or the bridge is gone.” said Charlie Wallin, a commissioner in Watauga County. “We can only get so far.”
Most people the crews come across turn out to be fine and just need water, but every day there are new requests to check on someone who hasn’t been heard from, Wallin said. When the search will end is hard to tell, he said.
“You hope you’re getting closer, but it’s still hard to know,” he said.
A woman walks to her damaged home Thursday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Pensacola, N.C.
A week into the search and rescue operations in Buncombe County, which includes the hard-hit tourist city of Asheville and where at least 72 were killed, the county doesn’t have an official tally of people who are unaccounted for or missing.
The county sheriff said his office believes more than 200 people are missing, though other officials said the number is constantly changing when crews make contact with people who hadn’t been accounted for or receive new names of people who might be missing.
“We’re continuing to find people. We know we have pockets of people who are isolated due to landslides and bridges out,” said Avril Pinder, the county manager. “So they are disconnected but not missing.”
Frank Johnson, who owns a company that makes robotic cutting machines in Mars Hill, North Carolina, said he feels like he’s running a relief mission on his own. He’s using his own workers, volunteers and supplies and know-how from his company to get water, food, fuel and other supplies to his neighbors.
“I’ve been hearing there are entire neighborhoods gone. I’m still not sure people have the whole grasp of what we’re dealing with,” Johnson said.
Electricity is being slowly restored, as the number of homes and businesses without power dipped below 1 million for the first time since last weekend, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages are in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene struck after coming into Florida on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane.
A volunteer gathers food for families Thursday at the volunteer fire station in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Pensacola, N.C.
President Joe Biden spoke with survivors and first responders and surveyed damage Thursday in Keaton Beach, Florida, walking past mountains of splintered wood, demolished homes and massive pieces of siding crumpled like paper.
Biden met with people who lost homes; one couple was living out of a trailer near the wreckage of their home, their personal belongings strewn on the ground.
“I want you to know I see you … I grieve with you,” Biden said while also thanking emergency workers and saying it was a moment to “put politics aside.”
Biden flew over the devastation in North and South Carolina on Wednesday.
The administration announced a federal commitment to foot the bill for debris removal and emergency protective measures for six months in North Carolina and three months in Georgia. The money will address the impacts of landslides and flooding and cover costs of first responders, search and rescue teams, shelters, and mass feeding.
How forecasts of bad weather can drive up your grocery bill
How forecasts of bad weather can drive up your grocery bill
Updated
It's no secret that a warming world will drive food prices higher, a phenomenon increasingly known as "heatflation." What's less known, but a growing area of interest among economists and scientists alike, is the role individual extreme weather events — blistering temperatures in Texas, a destructive tornado in Iowa — may have on what U.S. consumers pay at the supermarket.
At first glance, the answer might seem logical: A drought or flood that impacts agricultural production will, eventually, drive up prices. But it's not that simple, because what consumers pay for groceries isn't only reflective of crop yields or herd sizes, but the whole supply chain. As Grist reports, that's where it gets interesting: Economists are beginning to see a growing trend that suggests weather forecasts play a part in sticker shock. Sometimes the mere prediction of an extreme event — like the record-breaking temperatures, hurricanes, and wildfires forecasters are bracing for this summer — can prompt a spike in prices.
It isn't the forecast itself to blame, but concerns about what the weather to come might mean for the entire supply chain, as food manufacturers manage their risks and the expected future value of their goods, said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University.
"When it comes to the climate risk on food prices, people typically look at the production side. But over the last two years, we learned that extreme weather can raise food prices, [cause] transportation disruptions, as well as production disruptions," said Lee.
How much we pay for the food we buy is determined by retailers, who consider the producer's price, labor costs, and other factors. Any increases in what producers charge is typically passed on to consumers because grocery stores operate on thin profit margins. And if manufacturers expect to pay more for commodities like beef or specialty crops like avocados in the future, they may boost prices now to cover those anticipated increases.
"The whole discussion about the climate risks on the food supply chain is based on probabilities," Lee said. "It is possible that we do not see extreme temperatures this summer, or even later this year. We may realize there was no significant weather shock hitting the supply chain, but unfortunately that will not be the end of the story."
Supply chain disruptions and labor shortages are among the reasons food prices have climbed 25 percent since 2020. Climate change may be contributing as well. A study published earlier this year found "heatflation" could push them up by as much as 3 percentage points per year worldwide in just over a decade and by about 2 percentage points in North America. Simultaneous disasters in major crop and cattle producing regions around the world — known as multi-breadbasket failure — are among the primary forces driving these costs. Crop shortages in these regions may also squeeze prices, which can create volatility in the global market and bump up consumer costs.
Historically, a single, localized heat wave or storm typically wouldn't disrupt the supply chain enough to prompt price hikes. But a warming world might be changing that dynamic as extreme weather events intensify and simultaneous occurrences of them become the norm. How much this adds to consumers' grocery bills will vary, and depends upon whether these climate-fueled disasters hit what Lee calls "supply chain chokepoints" like vital shipping channels during harvest seasons.
"As the weather is getting more and more volatile because of climate change, we are seeing this issue more frequently," he said. "So what that means is the supply chain is getting more likely to be jeopardized by these types of risks that we have never seen before."
Lower water levels slow down barges on the Mississippi River
Updated
An ongoing drought that plagued the Mississippi River system from the fall of 2022 until February provides an excellent example of this. The Mississippi River basin, which covers 31 states, is a linchpin of America's agricultural supply chain. It produces 92 percent of the nation's agricultural exports, 78 percent of the world's feed grains and soybeans, and most of the country's livestock. Vessels navigating its roughly 2,350 miles of channels carry 589 million tons of cargo annually.
Transportation barriers created by low water, seen above, hampered the ability of crop-producing states in the Corn Belt to send commodities like corn and soybeans, primarily used for cattle feed, to livestock producers in the South. Thus emerged a high demand, low supply situation as shipping and commodity prices shot up, with economists expecting consumers to absorb those costs.
Past research showing that retail prices increase alongside commodity prices suggests that the drought probably contributed to higher overall food costs last year — and because droughts have a lingering impact on production even after they end, it may be fueling stubbornly high grocery prices today.
But although it seems clear that the drought contributed to higher prices, particularly for meat and dairy products, just how much remains to be gauged. One reason for that is a lack of research analyzing the relationship between this particular weather event and the consumer market. Another is it's often difficult to tease out which of several possible factors, including global trade, war, and export bans, influence specific examples of sticker shock.
While droughts definitely prompt decreases in agricultural production, Metin Çakır, an economist at the University of Minnesota, says whether that is felt by consumers depends on myriad factors. "This would mean higher raw ingredient costs for foods sold in groceries, and part of those higher costs will be passed onto consumers via higher prices. However, will consumer prices actually increase? The answer depends on many other supply and demand factors that might be happening at the same time as the impact of the drought," said Çakır.
In a forthcoming analysis previewed by Grist, Çakır examined the relationship between an enduring drought in California, which produces a third of the nation's vegetables and nearly two-thirds of its fruits and nuts, and costs of produce purchased at large grocery retailers nationwide. While the event raised consumer vegetable prices to a statistically significant degree, they didn't increase as much as Çakır expected.
This capricious consumer cost effect is due largely to the resiliency of America's food system. Public safety nets like crop insurance and other federal programs have played a large part in mitigating the impacts of adverse weather and bolstering the food supply chain against climate change and other shocks. By ensuring farmers and producers don't bear the brunt of those losses, these programs reduce the costs passed on to consumers. Advanced agricultural technology, modern infrastructure, substantial storage, and efficient transport links also help ensure retail price stability.
A 2024 study of the role climate change played on the U.S. wheat market from 1950 to 2018 found that although the impact of weather shocks on price variability has increased with the frequency of extreme weather, adaptive mechanisms, like a well-developed production and distribution infrastructure with sufficient storage capacity, have minimized the impact on consumers. Still, the paper warns that such systems may collapse when faced with "unprecedented levels of weather variability."
Last year was the world's warmest on record, creating an onslaught of challenges for crop and livestock producers nationwide. And this year is primed to be even more brutal, with the transition from El Niño — an atmospheric phenomenon that warms ocean temperatures — to La Niña, its counterpart that cools them. This cyclical change in global weather patterns is another potential threat for crop yields and source of supply chain pressures that economists and scientists are keeping an eye on.
They will be particularly focused on the Midwest and stretches of the Corn Belt, two regions prone to drought as an El Niño cycle gives way to a La Niña, according to Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Those growing regions for corn and soybeans are what he'll be watching closely as La Niña develops.
It's something Jennifer Ifft, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University, is also thinking about. "If you have a very severe drought in the Corn Belt … that's going to be the biggest deal, because that's gonna raise the cost of production for cattle, hogs, poultry," said Ifft. "So that would probably have the largest inflationary impacts."
As of January, U.S. beef herd inventory was at its lowest in 73 years, which multiple reports noted is due to the persisting drought that began in 2020. Americans, the majority of whom are already spending more on groceries than last year, are poised to soon see "record" beef prices at the supermarket. Food prices are also expected to rise another 2.2 percent in 2024, according to the USDA's Economic Research Service.
In a world enmeshed in extremes, our already-fragile food supply chain could be the next system teetering on the edge of collapse because of human-caused climate change. And costlier groceries linked to impending risk is the first of many warning signs that it is already splintering.
This story was produced by Grist and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
