TikTok was forced to issue safety warnings to content obsessed users chasing a viral moment after they filmed themselves partying and dancing in Hurricane Helene as it bore down on Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
Despite wind gusts of up to 140 mph ripping through Florida’s Big Bend region and leaving a trail of destruction extending past Georgia, some keen TikTokers decided the natural disaster was the perfect backdrop for their clips.
In one, three young Florida residents were seen dancing on a beach while sand whipped past them at speed, while another woman shot-gunned a beer on her balcony as she was buffeted by the hurricane.
As some went viral, TikTok slapped some videos with an alert, warning that ‘participating in this activity could result in you or others getting hurt.’
The warnings were an understatement to those that ignored evacuation orders, as Hurricane Helene’s death toll reached at least nineteen on Friday morning with officials fearing the number would grow through the weekend.
At least 23 people have been killed so far – including at least eleven deaths coming in Florida, eleven in Georgia, and one in North Carolina.
These deaths included a sign falling on one driver on a Tampa highway, two people drowning in coastal Pinellas County, and a four-year-old girl lost her life in a weather-related crash in North Carolina.
Despite mass evacuation orders, TikTokers showed off how they were passing the time in creative, often alcohol-fueled ways.
One woman showed herself swigging from a bottle of Titos vodka on her balcony, although she admitted in the caption: ‘We shoulda evacuated like everyone else…’
Some also made light of weather reporters as they parodied covering the storm in their dressing gowns and with bottles of wine as microphones.
But while some only joked about it, stunning footage from Friday morning showed one Fox Weather reporter interrupting his own live broadcast to rescue a woman stranded in her car.
Weatherman Bob Van Dillen sprang into action as he was filing a live report in northern Atlanta, Georgia, where Helene tore through on Friday morning after making landfall in Florida hours earlier.
Van Dillen began by pointing out the stranded woman ‘drove right into the flood waters’, and she could be heard screaming for help as he told the studio he had dialed 911 and was waiting for the fire department.
As the screams continued through his broadcast, Van Dillen cut his live shot short to wade in and help the woman, with Fox anchors in the studio branding him a ‘hero’ as he carried her to safety in chest-deep waters.
Van Dillen returned to the air after saving the woman and said he waded into the floodwaters because he lost faith that 911 firefighters would rescue her in time.
‘It’s hard not to, because 911 have so many calls,’ he said as he returned to Fox and Friends. ‘They’re going to take a long time to get here, but the fire department finally did get here.’
‘(The water was) up to my chest and there’s a little bit of a current, but she was a short lady too, she was probably about five feet,’ he explained.
He concluded: ‘I think the panic factor was setting in. And when you start to panic and you’re in water and it starts getting cold, you can really, things could really go downhill quickly. So, I just – I couldn’t wait.’
After the death toll reached 23, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the death toll may continue to climb as rescue teams work through the wreckage left behind.
The danger of the storm was highlighted as Floridians who decided not to evacuate were told to write their names on their bodies so they could be identified if they died in the storm.
‘Please write your name, birthday, and important information on your arm or leg in a PERMANENT MARKER so that you can be identified and family notified,’ the sheriff’s office in mostly rural Taylor County warned those who chose not to evacuate in a Facebook post.
Helene first made landfall with maximum sustained wind gusts of up to 140mph, prompting weather warnings far beyond the Florida coast up into northern Georgia and western North Carolina.
On Friday morning, more than 3 million homes and businesses were without power, including 1.2 million in South Carolina, 1.1 million in Florida, 1 million in Georgia, and 400,000 in North Carolina, according to the tracking site poweroutage.us.
The governors of those states, as well as Alabama and Virginia, all declared emergencies.
‘When Floridians wake up tomorrow morning, we’re going to be waking up to a state where very likely there’s been additional loss of life and certainly there’s going to be loss of property,’ Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Thursday night.
By early Friday, Helene was downgraded to a Category 1 storm as it moved past Georgia, after leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
