Authorities in North Carolina on Monday confirmed at least 94 storm-related fatalities from Hurricane Helene but still could not account for the number of those who remain missing or unaccounted for. 

Fatalities were reported across 20 counties, according to a morning update from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS).

The vast majority of those fatalities were reported in Buncombe, with 42 deaths, followed by Yancey and Henderson, at 12 and 7, respectively. 

NCDHSS told Fox News Digital that these fatalities were confirmed by the North Carolina Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME). 

NCDHSS said there are no missing persons numbers at this time because there are different sources of where missing persons and welfare check requests were reported during the storm. 

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The North Carolina Department of Public Safety told Fox News Digital that efforts are underway to accumulate those numbers. 

Workers, community members, and business owners clean up debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, North Carolina on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Justin J. Graney, Chief of External Affairs and Communications for North Carolina Emergency Management, told Fox News Digital there are “wide area searches taking place since [Hurricane Helen] took place.” 

“This includes grid searches, vehicle searches, damaged structure searches, and searches around areas where debris have collected. Hundreds of responders have conducted said searches,” Graney said. 

Graney explained that local entities take information reported to local 911, the NC 211 call center, social media reporters, shelter occupancy information, and any information reported to an EOC, “to attempt to locate anyone that someone has reported missing or that they have asked to have a welfare check conducted.”

“Many of these types of situations were thankfully resolved when communications systems were brought back online and family and friends were able to connect once again,” Graney said. 

Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina late last month, bringing catastrophic flooding from the storm’s historic rainfall in the North Carolina mountains. 

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Tens of thousands of electricity customers in the region remain without power and some people – including residents of Asheville, still lack running water. 

FILE: North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, right, and Deanne Criswell, Administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, await the arrival of Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris for a briefing on the damage from Hurricane Helene, at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, Oct. 5, 2024, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

On Thursday, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed the state’s first relief package to address Helene’s devastation, allocating $273 million for immediate needs and giving flexibility to agencies and displaced residents.

Nearly all the money will serve as the state’s share that is needed to meet the federal government’s match for state and local disaster assistance programs. Other money will be used in part to ensure public-school nutrition employees at closed schools get paid and to help officials administer elections in the coming weeks in the battleground state.

Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Weeks out from the November election after two hurricanes, Democrats and civil rights groups in various states, including battleground states Democrats and Republicans covet, have launched lawsuits to extend voter registration deadlines.

Just this week in Georgia, where the voter registration deadline was Monday, civil rights groups were denied motions for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. 

The Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda and Stacey Abrams’ New Georgia Project filed their initial complaint against Gov. Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party Oct. 7, arguing that not extending the deadline violates voters’ rights. 

Secretary Raffensberger’s office responded to the court’s decision in a statement, saying “We agree with Judge Ross, who said, ‘I don’t think we had even one voter who had been harmed or would likely be harmed by failure to register to vote.’” 

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The secretary also held a press conference shortly after the hurricane to announce various measures taken by the state to ensure citizens could make it to the ballot box. 

In Florida, District Judge Robert L. Hinkle denied a motion to issue a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction to block the Oct. 7 deadline and extend registration another 10 days.

Workers, community members and business owners clean up debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Marshall, N.C., Sept. 30, 2024. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The suit was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for Northern Florida Tuesday by multiple civil rights groups — the League of Women Voters, League of Women Voters of Florida Education Fund and the Florida chapter of the NAACP — against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Cord Byrd. It alleged the failure to extend the deadline places an “undue burden on the right to vote in violation of the First Amendment” and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause. 

They alleged the registration deadline also favors Florida voters unaffected by the hurricanes. 

Civil rights groups are suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Cord Byrd, alleging the failure to extend the deadline places an “undue burden on the right to vote in violation of the First Amendment” and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.  (Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Republican election lawyer Jason Torchinsky noted that requests seeking to extend the voter registration deadline in Florida are anything but uncommon, stating they “are routinely denied.” In Georgia, however, Torchinsky predicted extending the voter registration deadline would have made little difference, if any, given the state’s registration rate. 

Kaivan Shroff, a Democratic political commentator, and Greta Bedekovics, associate director of Democracy Policy at the left-wing Center for American Progress, both specifically targeted DeSantis and Kemp. 

“It seems like Republican governors Kemp and DeSantis are trying to play partisan politics and prevent people from exercising their voting rights in the wake of these tragic natural disasters,” Shroff told Fox News Digital.

“However, I’m not sure that will be the case this time because when you look at urban centers like Tampa, they’ve been trending red in recent years.” 

“Governors in states like Georgia and Florida have issued emergency policy orders in the past, expanding voting and registration options in the aftermath of a hurricane, including during the 2022 election cycle. There is no reason that cannot be similarly done this year,” Bedekovics told Fox News Digital. 

Mark Ard, director of external affairs for the Florida Department of State, cheered Judge Hinkle’s decision, telling Fox News Digital in a statement that Florida’s voter registration system has been operating around the clock since the 2022 election, giving voters ample time to register to vote. 

“The Department of State and supervisors of elections across the state noticed and published the Oct. 7, 2024, date. The state has a substantial interest in maintaining deadlines created by the legislature,” the statement said. “We’re happy to see that the court ruled for the state of Florida by recognizing the substantial state interest in maintaining the voter registration deadline and denying the plaintiffs’ attempt to alter Florida law.”

The roof of Tropicana Field is damaged the morning after Hurricane Milton hit the region Oct. 10, 2024, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Cecile M. Scoon, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, a plaintiff in the case, expressed disappointment in the ruling, saying the lawsuits are not politically motivated. 

“We’ve been bringing those kind of lawsuits for years. So, how is it political?” Swoon told Fox News Digital. “Before any of the parties were running for office, we were bringing these lawsuits.

“So, we have a history of being concerned about voters, regardless of how they vote. And, frankly, I do a lot of voter registration, and a lot of people that, when I work hard to get voter registration, many of them, probably more than 50%, are registering to vote for Trump. They say so.” 

Republican election lawyer Jason Torchinsky noted that requests seeking to extend the voter registration deadline in Florida are anything but uncommon. (iStock )

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Fox News Digital also spoke with Chad Ennis, vice president of the conservative nonprofit Honest Elections Project, who noted that several of the lawsuits were filed close to the state’s voter registration deadline, saying the judges who declined to extend the registration period made “the right rulings given the time frame.”

“I hate to say it is politically motivated, although the left always wants voter registration up until the day of the election,” Ennis said. “In a lot of cases, during COVID, they used COVID as an excuse to change deadlines and, unfortunately, they also tried to use the hurricanes to change the deadlines here.”  

Leslie Marshall, a Democratic strategist, told Fox News Digital she thinks the denial to extend voter registration could actually negatively affect Republicans come November. 

“Because this race is so close and because Donald Trump and Republicans have made, not gains with women, but they have made gains with African Americans — specifically, male African Americans — they may be shooting themselves in the foot with this ruling,” Marshall said.   

Various voting rights groups in the states most affected by the storms have asked to extend voter registration deadlines after the storms. (Bill Ingram/Palm Beach Post/USA Today Network via Reuters)

On the other hand, Democrats in South Carolina were successful in their legal maneuvers after the South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP) sued the South Carolina Elections Commission, and a circuit court judge ruled to extend the registration deadline to Oct. 14. 

“We are pleased the voter registration deadline has been extended. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s an issue of the public good and ensuring the right to vote is protected for everyone,” said SCDP Chair Christale Spain.

South Carolina Election Commission public information officer John Michael Catalano said the commission was “able to comply with the order with minimal impact to election administration. We don’t anticipate this causing any issues for voters during early voting or on Election Day.”

Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key Wednesday night, leaving around 3.2 million people in Florida alone without power by Thursday afternoon. Milton came in as a Category 3 storm, just a few weeks after Hurricane Helene battered parts of Florida before devastating North Carolina. 

EXCLUSIVE: Devon Mostert, wife of NFL running back for the Miami Dolphins’ Raheem Mostert, is standing by her comments earlier this week about Vice President Kamala Harris’ “ridiculous” attack on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis amid Hurricane Milton.

Harris took aim at DeSantis Monday when she told reporters that he was not taking her calls in the days preceding the second storm to smack Southwest Florida in two weeks.

“People are in desperate need of support right now and playing political games at this moment in these crisis situations . . . is just utterly irresponsible, and it is selfish,” Harris said of DeSantis on Monday.

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Mostert took to her Instagram at the time to praise DeSantis for doing a “great job” and continues to vocalize her support for the governor’s response to back-to-back natural disasters.

“I really don’t think that Kamala’s comments about him add up,” Mostert told Fox News Digital during an exclusive video interview. “He is focused on taking care of his Floridians, and that’s exactly where his focus should be.”

“All of our resources and time were supposed to be on that,” Mostert went on. “Yet she’s standing on the tarmac complaining that somebody didn’t take her call. To me, that just seems ridiculous.”

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DeSantis hit back at Harris earlier this week, saying she has “no role” in the process and that he was working well and directly with FEMA and President Joe Biden.

Biden doubled down on the claims during a press briefing at the White House on Wednesday when Real Clear Politics reporter Philip Wegmann asked him whether DeSantis needed to take Harris’ calls.

“All I can tell you is I’ve talked to Governor DeSantis,” Biden said. “He’s been very gracious. He thanked me for all we’ve done. He knows what we’re doing, and I think that’s important.”

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Mostert said Harris’ attack and Biden’s acclaim for DeSantis didn’t add up.

“That’s what really triggered me, especially because they are a part of the same administration, but they were both spewing very different stories,” she said. “That, in my opinion, is selfish and utterly irresponsible.”

Since posting, Mostert told Fox News Digital she’s received continued hateful and racist rhetoric from social media.

“This is gross,” she said. “I truly can’t imagine sliding into someone’s DMs or commenting on somebody’s picture of their family talking about the skin color of my kids.”

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Mostert said that, while she’s fluffing off negativity and comments calling her a “white, snowflake, gold-digging wife,” there is a limit to her tolerance of leftist commentators.

“When you talk about my kids, you’re really crossing a line,” she said.

“I know who I am,” Mostert added. “I know my heart. I know my family dynamic. I know my husband. They think that they know me, and they know absolutely nothing.”

Despite the nastiness flooding her Instagram account, Mostert says that many more users are commending her for speaking out on a platform. More directly, the reinforced support from NFL wives and girlfriends with reciprocal views is paramount.

“There are a lot more of us than the media wants to admit,” she said of other NFL spouses. “We all have each other’s backs in this sense.”

Mostert added that, while she can’t speak for all the women, she surrounds herself with a mutual perspective.

“As a mama, I am voting to protect my kids in the future, so I am OK with the backlash,” she said.

“[Kamala Harris] is ill-equipped to be the next President of the United States,” Mostert said.