Hurricane Helene has left a wake of death and destruction across Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee after it made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26. Despite being downgraded to a tropical depression, hundreds were killed by the storm, millions are still without power, and the damage is estimated in the billions of dollars.

The number of confirmed deaths reached 214 Thursday after officials in the Carolinas released updates, according to a USA TODAY Network analysis. The storm wrought a level of destruction on western North Carolina not seen for over 100 years. Officials in North Carolina said deaths in the state had risen to 108, including 72 deaths in Buncombe County, as reported by the Asheville Citizen-Times. South Carolina has reported 41 fatalities, Georgia 33, Florida 19, Tennessee 11 and Virginia two.

Here is a closer look at the devastation left behind, captured by aerial photos taken by Nearmap, and satellite images captured by Maxar Technologies:

Contributing: Staff/Asheville Citizen-times; Sean Dougherty and Dinah Voyles Pulver/USA TODAY

More visual stories about Hurricane Helene: Need help in Asheville, NC, after Helene? Mapping locations of water, food, shelter, Wi-Fi

Starting Hurricane Helene cleanup? Here’s how to deal with flood and storm damage

How flood damage is cutting off North Carolina communities from emergency relief

Hurricane Helene was massive at landfall. Here’s how it compares with past storms

Hurricane season is not over yet: Why season winds mean Florida should stay on alert

Maps track Hurricane Helene’s 800-mile path of destruction across southeastern US

Maps show Hurricane Helene’s destructive path across Florida, Georgia

Emergency preparedness 101: What to pack in a ‘go bag’

KEATON BEACH — President Joe Biden stopped in north Florida for a whirlwind visit to meet with local leaders and residents reeling from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene last week.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and John Louk, director of Taylor County Emergency Management, showed the president a FEMA map in a briefing on the side of the road in front of toppled trees and remnants of destroyed homes.

They detailed Helene’s catastrophic wind speed in Florida and explained how the storm cut a path of destruction into the Nature Coast, up to North Florida and whipped through South Georgia.

Preliminary damage estimates are a little over $50 million on the Taylor County coastline alone, said Andrew Morgan, the public information officer for the county’s emergency management agency.

About 250 to 300 homes on the county’s coast were lost or are uninhabitable, he said.

Florida continues to recover in the aftermath of the Category 4 storm, which left at least 19 dead, including at least 12 in Pinellas County — hundreds of miles away from where the storm made landfall. In the Southeast, the death toll surpassed 200 as the need for power and water in North Carolina grew more urgent for hundreds of thousands of residents.

On Thursday morning, the president arrived at Tallahassee International Airport in Air Force One and then departed on Marine One to tour ground zero of Helene’s landfall.

Bill Collins, a resident of Keaton Beach, was on his neighbor’s porch when the motorcade arrived and said he was glad to see the president make a stop in Taylor County.

“That’s what he needs to do. He’s supposed to go through and at least see with his own eyes,” Collins said.

He hopes Biden frees up more federal aid for states hit by Helene, especially North Carolina and Tennessee.

“We aren’t the only ones,” he told the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida. “We’re all in this together.”

In a post on X, Sen. Scott said he would be filing an appropriations bill to fund FEMA, the USDA and the SBA for Helene recovery efforts.

“During my meeting with President Biden, I stressed that the federal government’s response to hurricanes over the last two years has left too many Floridians, especially our farmers, hurting and with unmet needs – and this must be fixed NOW,” Scott wrote. 

He also criticized the federal government’s response to hurricanes Ian, Idalia and Debby.

“I’ll be fighting like hell to deliver disaster aid to our state, and ensure seamless debris removal guidance for our local communities, and I urged the federal officials there today to put Floridians and all Americans first by doing the same,” he said. 

In the briefing with the president, Louk said that while some of the homes are still standing, they are advising residents to inspect their homes for structural damage.

Biden, who donned a baseball cap and aviator sunglasses, spent time speaking with Taylor County’s first responders, including Sheriff Wayne Padgett.

“He was very nice, he shook all of our hands,” Morgan said.

Biden even sang “Happy Birthday” to one of the first responders.

“He was very supportive of what we have going on,” Morgan added.

The entire visit to Taylor County took no longer than two hours. 

Biden then returned to the Perry airport and boarded Marine One to head to Valdosta, Georgia. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis did not accompany the president on this visit. He also skipped out when Biden came to Florida after last year’s Hurricane Idalia, though he did meet with him after Hurricane Ian in 2022.

“No, it’s just we had this planned,” DeSantis said, when asked whether there was any reason he didn’t accompany Biden Thursday. DeSantis spoke from Ana Maria Island in Manatee County, more than 200 miles away from where Biden visited.

He held a press conference to announce three executive orders related to recovering from Helene: waiving local governments’ rental date requirements; allowing supervisors of elections affected by Helene to set up alternative polling places; and streamlining ports and supply chain operations to mitigate the effects of the port strike and get needed supplies into the state to aid recovery efforts.

Ahead of Thursday’s tour of devastation in Florida and Georgia, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre briefed reporters in the air on the way to Tallahassee airport. She trumpeted how the Biden administration will cover 100 percent of the costs associated “with things like debris removal, first responders, search and rescue, shelters, and mass feeding operations.”

“Still, we know there is more work to be done,” she said. “And we will be here, doing that work, for as long as it takes.”

Ana Goñi-Lessan, state watchdog reporter for the USA TODAY Network – Florida, can be reached at agonilessan@gannett.com. 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Republican Sen. Rick Scott is set to place roughly $10 million in new TV ads in the homestretch of a Florida Senate race that he is widely seen as leading but that Democrats have continued to make noise in.

The Scott TV buy, first shared with NBC News, will focus mostly on the Tampa, Orlando and Miami media markets, with spot buys in other parts of the state, according to campaign advisers.

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He is running against former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who has been massively outspent but is getting some national help from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the race’s final weeks.

The DSCC has pledged a “multimillion” dollar effort to help Mucarsel-Powell, Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried announced Monday in a call with reporters. She was unable to provide a specific figure, and the DSCC declined to offer one. Last week, it said in a release that it was making a multimillion-dollar TV buy in both Florida in Texas but did not disclose specifics.

“That money is coming at the right time, and we are going to use it to make sure that we are building the infrastructure to get Debbie Mucarsel-Powell over the finish line [and] retire Rick Scott,” Fried said.

Regardless of whatever national money comes for Democrats, Scott will no doubt hold his long-running huge cash advantage. Scott has spent at least $8 million of his personal wealth, and the $10 million media buy is as much as Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign had spent total throughout the end of July. Scott’s campaign spent $20 million during that same time, according to the most recently available campaign finance reports.

“Our campaign has taken this race seriously from the beginning. We are in a strong position and keeping our feet on the gas through the end,” Scott adviser Chris Hartline said.

The race itself has been a bit off the national radar, as Florida is increasingly seen as a Republican stronghold. But Democrats have placed thousands of volunteers across the state and maintained consistent messaging framing Scott as “in trouble,” highlighting what has long been Scott’s relatively low approval rating for a politician who has never lost a statewide campaign in Florida.

“It’s no surprise that polling shows this race tied — Floridians know that Rick Scott is far too extreme for our state,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “For 14 years Rick Scott has ruthlessly attacked our freedoms, hard-earned benefits and economic opportunities. He has cut funding for our education, our veterans and our coastal communities as our state continues to face the effects of extreme weather, climate change and an affordability crisis that began under his watch.”

Scott has generally run like an incumbent who expects to win. He has not debated Mucarsel-Powell and has focused on her less than she has on him — a common tactic for a candidate who thinks they are winning. His most consistent message has painted Mucarsel-Powell as “an open borders socialist.”

Public polling in the race has generally had Scott on top, but not by huge margins. He has been up anywhere from the high single digits to only a handful of percentage points. Because the race has been so close on paper, it has fueled Democrats’ message that it is up for grabs.

New polling shared with NBC News from the GOP polling firm Tyson Group has Scott up 46-38, with 12% unsure, an 8-point margin that is among the biggest polling gaps of the election cycle.

Hartline, the Scott adviser, said it’s margins like that that have them unconcerned even if national money does flow into the race.

“National Democrats can flirt with spending in Florida if they want and risk losing incumbent races,” he said. “We will have a big win either way.”