LAUREN TAYLOR: North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 men on his final day in office. All fifteen will still serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.

The commutations reduce the state’s death row, which has 121 others on it, by more than ten percent.

Cooper is leaving office after eight years due to term limits. Fellow Democrat Josh Stein, currently the state attorney general, will assume the office on New Year’s Day.

Cooper’s office said they reviewed petitions for clemency from 89 different people on death row before choosing to act on the fifteen cases.

In a press release, Cooper said, “These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impose. After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

It’s a smaller set of commutations than President Joe Biden issued earlier this month for federal death row inmates. The president commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole.

It’s a move that received major criticism from Republicans, with President-elect Donald Trump saying he thought the move made no sense.

Although North Carolina allows the death penalty, the state has not executed anyone since 2006 as lawsuits work their way through the legal system.

Cooper also issued two other commutations for people convicted of crimes that did not come with a death sentence, as well as two pardons for people who have already served their sentences.

For Straight Arrow News, I’m Lauren Taylor.

And for all the latest updates on this and other top stories, download the Straight Arrow News app or visit SAN.com.

Over the weekend, minor flooding and rain destroyed roughly 20 makeshift roads and bridges erected as temporary solutions in Boone and Newland after Helene wiped out whole infrastructural systems, according to relief group WNC Strong’s comments to a local news outlet.

As temperatures are expected to drop below freezing in the region, nearly 700 families are still living outside in tents in the hard-hit area. Benjamin Vanhok said nobody has helped the 15 families his organization has identified that are “completely displaced.”

“It’s not over,” the WNC Strong representative said. “It’s only going get worse before it gets better.”

With the weekend flooding, some residents in the rural area are completely stranded from accessing the emergency services and are completely reliant on grassroots efforts to receive vital supplies.

“They’re stranded again and they will be stranded for the next week until this cold snap passes,” Vanhok noted. “With military-style trucks, they can get across and get them out, but them taking their own cars, they can’t.”

Avery County Manager Phillip Barrier, who represents the city of Newland, warned that more than 20 residents in the county are unreachable by first responders after nearly a dozen emergency footbridges built by volunteers after Helene washed away over the weekend.

“There are several people that we can’t get emergency access to,” he told NBC News during an interview, noting that recovery efforts have “been super slow.”

Likewise, residents in Yancey County, another community devastated by Helene, said Monday that “the need for a bridge or a safe road does not seem to be a priority,” noting the dearth of infrastructure has left “close to 75 families stranded.”

“It seems this community has been overlooked,” one Yancey County resident wrote in a Facebook post. “… My son and his wife are expecting a baby, and have to go in and out with the worry of getting stuck, or with the fear of the bridge being underwater, like it is now. My mother-in-law is on oxygen and luckily was able to make it to the hospital a couple of weeks ago by ambulance.”

Bridges for Avery, the volunteer group that constructed many of the makeshift bridges for residents, is back at work building new infrastructure for those affected.

“For many, these footbridges are the only way home,” according to the organization.

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Bridges for Avery and WNC Strong are just two of the countless private grassroots efforts that emerged as the primary source of help for North Carolina residents after Helene struck.

“These small towns in the heart of Appalachia is what made the area so special,” WNC Strong posted on Instagram. “We exist to help rebuild the region in multiple ways. Right now we’re seeking more local businesses we can partner with to bring back to life economically.”

Follow Helene’s path of destruction from Florida, into Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee

Hurricane Helene ripped through five states in September, causing massive flooding and leaving 241 reported deaths in its wake. USA TODAY Network reporters from each state recount the impact along the path of the historic storm:  

As Helene forms in the Gulf of Mexico, heavy rains soak western North Carolina

As Helene approached Florida, Tal Galton, a naturalist and owner of a local ecotour company in Western North Carolina, grew concerned about forecasters’ warnings of the potential for epic rainfall in the Appalachians.

Flowing down the steep slopes of the Black Mountains near the Blue Ridge Parkway, the South Toe River cuts through narrow valleys and snakes past homes, farms and campgrounds for more than 30 miles in Yancey County before emptying into its counterpart, the North Toe River, near Kona.

Galton knew the South Toe’s long history of devastating floods. Earlier this year he had placed a few signs along the river to mark the dates when the river had flooded. Two of the signs mark high-water events from September 2004, when remnants of Hurricanes Frances and Ivan swept through the region, pushing the river more than 15 feet above flood stage one week and nearly 12 feet the next.

He had fastened the high-water markers to a red maple tree on the river’s banks not just to track past floods but also with the idea that bigger floods could occur in the future.

In the days before Helene arrived, Galton reinforced the signs. He worried they might not hold – that if the river breached its banks again, floodwaters would sweep the markers away.

When it came to any future floods, it wasn’t so much the total rain the South Toe River Valley could receive that concerned Galton – it was just how fast that rain would fall.

“Six inches spread over the course of two days is no big deal. Six inches in six hours causes headaches and anxiety,” he wrote in June. “Six inches in three hours could be a record flood.”

Just three months later, that’s exactly what happened.

Florida: Helene surges ashore

Helene crashed into Florida at 11:10 p.m. as a Category 4 hurricane, wrecking communities along the sparsely populated rural coast near the Big Bend region, a part of the state most vulnerable to storm surges.

• In Pinellas County, the surging Gulf of Mexico rushed inland, causing at least 12 deaths, officials said.
• Measured wind gusts in Florida peaked at 99 mph at the Perry-Foley Airport in Perry. The National Weather Service said it’s probable higher winds occurred in areas with no stations to measure wind speeds.

Horseshoe Beach resident Bill Dotson, 67, gauged the floodwaters at around 15 feet based on the damage to the top of his concrete pilings, he said. Helene was his family’s fourth hurricane since moving to the area in 2021.

In Keaton Beach, the winds and a suspected 15-foot storm surge combined to destroy an estimated 80% of the community. Dave Fischer waited out the storm in his home roughly 2 miles inland.

“Only three or four residents have been able to return and live in their homes,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that, from what I understand, just aren’t coming back.”

Georgia: Storm topples buildings, devastates farms

As Helene made landfall, Georgia braced for the worst of Helene − an unfamiliar feeling for the city of Augusta, which typically serves as a refuge for people fleeing natural disasters in Florida or on the Georgia coast.

Winds damaged at least 115 structures, trapping people inside their homes, according to a weather service preliminary summary. Through the night, Georgia residents huddled in their homes listening to trees and utility poles snapping in winds measured at up to 70 mph in Augusta.

In coastal Savannah, 59% of residents lost power. In Augusta, 90% of the homes and businesses lost electricity and 95% lost water. Without power, three of the city’s five water plants went offline.

The following day, the first reports of Helene-related deaths began to emerge in Georgia. In McDuffie County, a 27-year-old mother and her 1-month-old twin boys died in bed together after a tree crashed through their mobile home.

Gusty winds as high as 90 mph or more and torrential rains caused heavy damage to pecan, cotton and poultry farms and timber lands. Jefferson County, one of the hardest-hit Georgia counties, had timber losses of more than $75 million, according to preliminary estimates from the weather service.

• State officials reported 33 deaths.
• More than 400 homes were destroyed and more than 6,000 were damaged, according to weather service preliminary reports.
• Rainfall reached as high as 14 inches along Helene’s path. Flooding in Atlanta’s Fulton County prompted water rescues by boat.

South Carolina: Tornadoes, massive flooding hit state

In South Carolina, the center of Helene was roughly 30 miles southwest of Clemson around 8 a.m. on Sept. 27. By midmorning, skies were mostly clear, but the storm downed trees and power lines throughout the northern part of the state. Though the majority of the storm’s initial damage occurred early Friday morning, the ramifications lasted for weeks.

• The storm sparked 21 tornadoes in the state, the worst outbreak caused by a tropical cyclone in South Carolina since Francis’ 46 in 2004. At the height of the storm, 1.4 million customers were without power.
• Peak wind gusts in the state were estimated at up to 100 mph by the weather service, and 21.66 inches of rain fell at Sunfish Mountain in Greenville County.
• The Saluda River crested at a record 20.23 feet and the Broad River at 29.48 feet. The Reedy River reached 16.19 feet near downtown Greenville, a stretch usually at about 1.1 feet.
• 49 people died in South Carolina as a result of Helene, state officials reported.

In the end, the storm caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, including an estimated $65 million in damage to crops and livestock, $193 million in damage to agricultural infrastructure and $194 million in timber loss.

North Carolina: Raging waters, landslides take catastrophic toll 

At 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 27, the South Toe River in Yancey County, North Carolina, reached 9 feet above a historic high-water 1977, hitting 26.06 feet, according to a U.S. Geological Survey gauge next to the marker Galton reinforced at the red maple tree. Over the course of three days, more than 30 inches of rain had fallen in Busick, 7 miles away near the South Toe’s headwaters. Between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. that day, more than 6 inches of rain fell, according to data from the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Yancey County and the South Toe River Valley, below the eastern slopes of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi, were among the hardest-hit areas and the epicenter of the storm system’s interaction with the mountains.

That same morning, Helene’s rains, when combined with the predecessor rain event that hit the region ahead of the tropical storm, set off widespread flooding across several counties at almost the exact same time.

In Asheville, nearly 14 inches of rain fell through that Friday. The French Broad River, which runs along the city’s arts district, collects water from a large network of creeks and streams, where rain fell at even greater amounts. That includes the Swannanoa River, which snakes through the historic Biltmore Village area.

The flow of the French Broad grew from 7,630 gallons per second on Tuesday, Sept. 24, to almost 156,000 gallons a second on Thursday, Sept. 26, filling with reddish-brown mud and debris. The USGS gauge didn’t show data on Sept. 27 or 28, likely missing the height of the river’s flow.

By Sunday, as the water began to recede, the river was still flowing at more than 240,000 gallons a second.

• Asheville set an all-time three-day record rainfall at 13.98 inches, 5.49 inches higher than the previous record.
• Buncombe County, home to Asheville, had 43 deaths attributed to the storm as of Dec. 18.
• Helene killed 11 in Yancey County, including a family who had fled the war in Ukraine. They died when the South Toe destroyed their three-bedroom home, USA TODAY reported. Across the state, the death toll stands at 103.
• Near Lake Lure, where catastrophic damage occurred, the flow in Cove Creek on Sept. 26 was 32 times more than it had been two days earlier, growing from 459 gallons per second to 14,736 gallons per second.

Helene’s torrential rains forced hundreds of people to flee their homes in Swannanoa, just east of Asheville. Many who couldn’t escape awaited rescue in attics and rooftops, and others were swept away by the Swannanoa River.

Some were swept far down one of the county’s rivers. Others remain missing.

Restaurants and retail shops in Biltmore Village were inundated with floodwaters near where the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers meet. Shops and studios in the nearby River Arts District were destroyed. Many businesses that survived Helene’s initial devastation couldn’t reopen until the city’s water service was restored weeks after Helene hit. Even then, the system wasn’t pushing potable water through its pipes until Nov. 18, devastating the local economy.

In October, Buncombe County’s unemployment rate spiked to 8.8%, the highest in the state. Before the storm, it was just 2.5%, the state’s lowest.

The major interstates leading into Asheville, I-26 and I-40, took extensive damage. Near the state line with Tennessee, a large swath of I-40 collapsed into the Pigeon River, which rose to nearly 22 feet before the observation gauge below Waterville – a Haywood County town near the border – quit responding, the Asheville Citizen Times reported. Fourteen miles away, the river crested at 30 feet. An additional section of I-40 collapsed in December, delaying a planned reopening.

Helene’s intense rains didn’t just threaten homes and lives with rising floodwaters but also spawned fatal landslides. According to the USGS, Helene triggered more than 2,000 landslides, most of them in Western North Carolina. More than half hit homes, roads or other structures.  

Two Buncombe County landslides killed 11 members of a single family.

In Hot Springs, a small river outpost in Madison County, the French Broad River swelled to more than 20 feet, flowing at 101,000 cubic feet per second − equal to the amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls in high season, USA TODAY previously reported.

One survivor sheltering at a Hot Springs hotel threatened by floods described the experience as “a scene out of the Titanic.”

In Yancey County, two landslides that started atop Little Celo Mountain converged into one. The debris flow of trees, mud and rock crossed N.C. 80, knocking Jennie Boyd Bull’s home off its foundation as Boyd, a local poet, sat at her kitchen table eating her morning oatmeal. Bull’s neighbors helped her out of her home.

The slide continued all the way down to the river, not far from the where the South Toe crested at the Red Maple around the same time. Despite all the destruction, when the floods finally receded, all the high-water markers remained.

Tennessee: Tragedy hits rural community 

Like much of Western North Carolina, East Tennessee was saturated with rain before Helene’s arrival.

By the end of Sept. 26 at least 4 inches had fallen over much of the area.

One big danger was the Nolichucky River, streams, creeks and tributaries, transforming the river into a deadly torrent.

By 7:41 a.m. the weather service office in Morristown sent out a warning: “Rivers on the RISE!!” At 9:14 a.m. and 9:20 a.m. it sent flash flood emergency text message alerts to phones in the Erwin area.

Flooding in the state broke 100-year-old records. In Newport, the Pigeon River set an all-time record high. In Embreeville, just downstream from the worst damage in Erwin, the Nolichucky River easily surpassed the previous record of 24 feet, though an exact reading is impossible because the river gauge broke in the floods.

• At least 18 all-time rainfall records were set in East Tennessee, including a four-day total of 10.25 inches at Mount LeConte near Gatlinburg, the highest report in the state for Helene.  
• The flooding Nolichucky River overtook and surrounded Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, stranding 54 people on the roof and others in rafts. At the Nolichucky Dam in Greene County, the river was flowing over the dam at a rate of 1.3 million gallons a second, nearly double the peak daily flow at Niagara Falls, according to the state climate office.
• At least 17 deaths were linked to Helene in Tennessee, including six employees at Impact Plastics in Unicoi County.

Impact Plastics management said everyone was told to leave the plant no later than 10:50 a.m. By then 6 inches of water covered the parking lot.

By 12:13 p.m. a dozen employees climbed on the bed of a semitruck parked nearby to escape the rising water. A little more than an hour later, they were texting and phoning loved ones to say goodbyes. Soon the truck capsized and the workers were swept away. Six died; rescuers pulled survivors from a debris pile hundreds of yards downriver.

A long road ahead

The road to recovery will be long. Helene left hundreds of millions in damage across the Southeast. Some roads − including portions of Interstate 40 − remain closed as repairs continue. Residents and local officials continue to push for more recovery aid, not only from their states but from the federal government.

In the end, Helene became one of the deadliest natural disasters to hit the U.S. mainland in nearly two decades and will be forever linked to the immeasurable losses felt every day by Americans in these five states and beyond.

Contributing: Javier Zarracina, Ramon Padilla, Veronica Bravo, Stephen Beard, Jennifer Borresen, Janet Loehrke and Dinah Pulver