Authorities across a wide swath of the southeastern United States faced the daunting task on Saturday of cleaning up from Hurricane Helene, one of the most powerful to hit the country, as the death toll continued to rise.

At least 43 deaths were reported by late on Friday, and officials feared still more bodies would be discovered across several states, Reuters reported.

Helene, downgraded late on Friday to a post-tropical cyclone, continued to produce heavy rains across several states, sparking life-threatening flooding that threatened to create dam failures that could inundate entire towns.

In Florida's Pinellas County near Tampa, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said he had never seen destruction like that which Helene wrought. "I would just describe it, having spent the last few hours out there, as a war zone," Gualtieri told a press conference.

At least 3.5 million customers remained without power across five states, with authorities warning it could be several days before services were fully restored.

Scientists say climate change contributes to fueling stronger, more destructive hurricanes.

Before moving north through Georgia and into Tennessee and the Carolinas, Helene hit Florida's Big Bend region as a powerful Category 4 hurricane on Thursday night, packing 140 mph (225 kph) winds. It left behind a chaotic landscape of overturned boats in harbors, felled trees, submerged cars and flooded streets.

Police and firefighters carried out thousands of water rescues throughout the affected states on Friday.

More than 50 people were rescued from the roof of a hospital in Unicoi County, Tennessee, about 120 miles (200 km) northeast of Knoxville, state officials said, after floodwaters swamped the rural community.

Rising waters from the Nolichucky River prevented ambulances and emergency vehicles from evacuating patients and others there, the Unicoi County Emergency Management Agency said on social media. Emergency crews in boats and helicopters were conducting rescues.

Elsewhere in Tennessee, Rob Mathis, the mayor of Cocke County, ordered the evacuation of downtown Newport because of a potential failure at the nearby Walters dam.

In western North Carolina, Rutherford County emergency officials warned residents near the Lake Lure Dam that it might fail, although they said late on Friday that failure did not appear imminent.

In nearby Buncombe County, landslides forced interstates 40 and 26 to close, the county said on X.

Myanmar's death toll from floods rose to at least 113 as of Saturday evening, the country's military government said on Sunday, following heavy rains brought on by Typhoon Yagi that has caused havoc across parts of Southeast Asia, Reuters reported.

At least 320,000 people have been displaced and 64 were still missing, government spokesman Zaw Min Tun said, according to a late-night bulletin on state-run MRTV.

"The government is conducting a rescue and rehabilitation mission," he said.

Adverse weather from Typhoon Yagi, the strongest storm to hit Asia this year, has killed hundreds of people in Vietnam and Thailand, and flood waters from swollen rivers have inundated cities in both countries.

The flooding in Myanmar began last Monday, with at least 74 people killed by Friday, based on state media reports.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since a military coup in February 2021 and violence has engulfed large parts of the country, read the report.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the storm's rains mainly affected the capital Naypyitaw, as well as the Mandalay, Magway, and Bago regions, along with eastern and southern Shan state, Mon, Kayah and Kayin states.

"Central Myanmar is currently the hardest hit, with numerous rivers and creeks flowing down from Shan hills," the OCHA said.

Reports of more deaths and landslides have emerged, but gathering information has been challenging due to damaged infrastructure and downed phone and internet lines.

State media also reported that five dams, four pagodas, and more than 65,000 houses were destroyed by the flooding.

About a third of Myanmar's 55 million people require humanitarian assistance but many aid agencies, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, cannot operate in many areas because of access restrictions and security risks, Reuters reported.

Typhoon Yagi, Asia's most powerful storm this year, left dozens dead in northern Vietnam and widespread damage as it churned westwards, preliminary government estimates showed on Monday, while the weather agency warned of more floods and landslides.

Thirty five people have died and 24 are missing, mostly because of landslides and floods triggered by the typhoon, Vietnam's disaster management agency said.

The typhoon made landfall on Saturday on Vietnam's northeastern coast, home to large manufacturing operations of domestic and foreign companies, and was downgraded to a tropical depression on Sunday by the meteorological agency, Reuters reported.

It cut power to millions of households and companies, flooded highways, disrupted telecommunications networks, downed a medium-sized bridge and thousands of trees and brought to a halt economic activity in many industrial hubs.

Managers and workers at industrial parks and factories in Haiphong, a coastal city of two million, said on Monday they had no electricity and were trying to salvage equipment from rain in plants whose metal sheets roofing had been blown away.
"Everyone is scrambling to make sites safe and stocks dry," said Bruno Jaspaert, head of DEEP C industrial zones, which host plants from more than 150 investors in Haiphong and the neighboring province of Quang Ninh.

"Lots of damages," said Hong Sun, the chairman of the South Korean business association in Vietnam when asked about the typhoon's impact on Korean factories in coastal areas.

The weather agency warned of more floods and landslides, noting that rainfall ranged between 208 mm and 433 mm in several parts of the northern region over the past 24 hours.

State-run power provider EVN said that more than 5.7 million customers lost power during the weekend as dozens of power lines were broken, but electricity was restored on Monday to nearly 75% of those affected.