Sam Perkins spent Saturday trudging through dangerous terrain to check on his parents, whose home was hit hard by Hurricane Helene.

The highest death toll was in North Carolina, where flooding wiped out whole communities. Residents there and across vast areas of the Southeast were without water, power, phone and internet communication.

Western North Carolina residents faced a "post-apocalyptic" landscape on Monday in the wake of hurricane Helene, with hundreds of people still missing and residents struggling amid flooded roads and a lack of basic services.