Crawfordville, 28 Sept

Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern US on Friday, killing at least 40 people in four states, snapping trees like twigs, tearing apart homes and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.

Georgia Governor 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 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.

The damage extended hundreds of miles to the north, with flooding as far away as northeast Tennessee, where a “dangerous rescue situation” was unfolding after 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital while rapid waters flooded the facility, according to Ballad Health.

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.

Increasing numbers of deaths also were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Video on social media sites showed sheets of rain coming down and siding coming off buildings in Perry, Florida, near where the storm arrived. -AP