Over a week after Hurricane Helene devastated the Southeast, the death toll reached at least 225 across several states as of midday Saturday, as twin babies in Georgia have been identified as the youngest-known victims, the Associated Press reported.
Helene made landfall last Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of around 140 miles per hour near Perry, Florida, in the state’s Big Bend region. The storm also brought storm surges and torrential rain that threatened several dams and flooded Asheville, North Carolina. Over a week later, damage and devastation remain.
Officials have reported at least 225 lives were lost across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas as of midday Saturday. While the number of missing people remains unclear, officials said Friday in Buncombe County, North Carolina, that there are about 75 active missing persons cases remaining, as the search for many others continues across several states.
Among the victims are twin babies in Georgia as they have now been identified as the storm’s youngest-known victims.
Speaking to the AP on Saturday, Obie Williams recalled the last moments he had contact with his daughter Kobe Williams, 27, and her month-old twin boys, Khazmir and Khyzier Williams.
Amid the storm, Kobe was sheltering in her trailer home in rural Thomson, Georgia, with her mother, Mary Jones, who had been helping take care of the twins. As the wind howled and branches battered the windows, Kobe spoke to Obie on the phone.
Obie told the AP he could hear the babies crying in the background as he urged his daughter to take shelter in the bathroom until the storm passed. Kobe had agreed, but silence soon followed.
Newsweek has reached out to the Thomson Emergency Services via email for comment.
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Jones, who was on the other side of the trailer, had said that she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones said, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were later found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie told the AP. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
The twins, born just weeks earlier on August 20, are the youngest victims of the catastrophic storm, which has left families across Georgia and surrounding states grieving. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from Washington County, Georgia.
As communities begin to pick up the pieces, rescue efforts are ongoing, with many areas still cut off by fallen trees and downed power lines.
For Kobe’s father, the loss is immeasurable. “That was my baby,” he said. “And everybody loved her.”
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe Jones’ niece, told the AP. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
The family plans to hold a funeral service this Friday to remember Kobe and her twin boys.