A week after Hurricane Helene ripped through the American Southeast, it has careened into a terrible category of natural disasters: By some measures, it is now the third-deadliest storm to make landfall in the United States, after Hurricane Maria and Hurricane Katrina. More than 200 people have now been reported dead. Over half of the fatalities so far occurred in North Carolina’s mountainous western region, where entire towns were crushed beneath the weight of relentless rains and crumbling earth. And the death toll is expected to keep rising.Hurricanes can be…
