NJ’s Task Force 1, Red Cross help with Hurricane Helene recovery

🌧️Nearly 100 members of NJ's Task Force 1 are in North Carolina & Georgia

🌧️9 Red Cross New Jersey volunteers are helping with shelters

🌧️JCP&L employees are also helping restore power for nearly one million customers

More members of New Jersey’s Task Force 1 (NJ-TFI) have headed south to help with recovery from Hurricane Helene in some of the hardest hit areas of the South.

The storm made landfall in Florida's "big bend" Thursday night as a Category 4 hurricane with 140 mph winds. A weakened Helene quickly moved through Georgia, then soaked the Carolinas and Tennessee with torrential rains that flooded creeks and rivers, and strained dams.

Eighty members of NJ-TF1 are on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina, one of the worst hit areas, helping with search and rescue operations. Asheville, located in the mountains of western N.C., has become isolated as over 400 roads are closed, and power and cell phone service is out.

Thirty deaths have been reported in the county where Ashville is located. The death toll was at 91 in Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

ALSO READ: NJ woman loses 'everything' as deadly Helene cashes into Florida

New Jersey contingent of help

Fourteen members of the All-Hazards Incident Management Team were dispatched to Georgia to assist with ground support, facilities management, operations, resource allocation, public messaging, and safety oversight. Red Cross New Jersey has sent nine volunteers along with a mobile command center and a second disaster response vehicle.

More than 2 million homeowners and other utility customers were still without power Sunday night. South Carolina had the most outages, and Gov. Henry McMaster asked for patience as crews dealt with widespread snapped power poles.

Approximately 45 JCP&L line workers and support personnel have been sent to western Georgia, where they are assisting Georgia Power in repairing the damage and getting lights back on. They are part of a contingent of approximately 200 line workers and support personnel from FirstEnergy, JCP&L’s parent company, that hit the road to aid local power companies.

Approximately 60 FirstEnergy workers are in North Carolina where they are providing aid to Duke Energy, with the remaining 140 – including those from JCP&L – in Georgia.

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