In Blackshear, Georgia, a dedicated firefighter died while trying to protect others from Hurricane Helene. In Catawba County, North Carolina, a 4-year-old who lit up every room she walked into was killed in a head-on car crash on a rainy road. And in Charlotte, North Carolina, a tree fell on a home, killing a resident.
Hurricane Helene’s victims were still being counted Friday afternoon. But after it slammed into the Southeast overnight as a Category 4 storm, officials said it had killed more than three dozen people in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas.
In Georgia, Vernon Leon Davis and other firefighters had been setting up barricades in an area where a live power line had fallen, Blackshear Police Chief Christopher Wright said in an interview, citing a preliminary investigation. After Davis got into his pickup truck, the storm started to worsen and a tree landed on top of his truck, killing him early Friday morning, Wright said.
Wright said Davis, an assistant fire chief, had been a firefighter for more than 30 years, most of that time on a voluntary basis.
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Wright remembered Davis, who went by his middle name, Leon, as “one of the greatest folks that Blackshear had.”
“We’re all better for having known him,” Wright said. “He would do anything for anybody.”
On Thursday morning, Davis’ brother, James Carlas Davis, who lives in Mississippi, texted Davis, their two sisters and other family members in a group text chat and asked whether they were ready for Helene. He included a praying hands emoji and told them that he loved them.
James Davis said his brother responded: “As ready as we can get” and explained that he had prepared his generator to power his home, where his wife, Shirley, would be while he was out cutting up fallen trees and sandbagging people’s homes from the water.
“That was my last communication with him,” Davis said Friday afternoon, his voice breaking as he spoke.
Rellina Davis Lester said she takes some comfort in knowing that her older brother died while protecting others.
“It’s hard, but he was doing what he loved and that was his calling in life,” she said.
In North Carolina, officials said a resident of Charlotte was pronounced dead early Friday after wind and rain caused a tree to topple onto their home.
And a day earlier, in Catawba County, North Carolina, about an hour northwest of Charlotte, a young girl named Luna Jade Gaddis died when two families’ lives intersected under tragic circumstances.
The families’ vehicles got into a collision just after 8 a.m. ET Thursday when one car crossed the centerline of a road and collided head-on with the other, according to a statement from the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. The statement said the crash happened during “heavy rain conditions” and that in addition to killing 4-year-old Luna, it injured three other children who were passengers in the cars: a 12-year-old who was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, a 2-year-old hospitalized with life-threatening injuries and a 4-year-old hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.
The drivers of both cars, Lyndsey Nicole Gaddis, 32, of Catawba, and Tiffany Miner Sipe, 34, of Claremont, were also taken to the hospital, according to the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. The statement said that the initial investigation indicated that impairment was not a contributing factor in the collision but that charges were possible after the investigation is complete.
Luna's grandmother, Elizabeth Gaddis, described her granddaughter as a "gift from God" who gave the best hugs and “could make the room light up when she walked in.”
"Her smile was infectious, her laugh was contagious and more times than not she would make you question who was right and who was wrong," Gaddis wrote in a statement she shared exclusively with NBC News.
Gaddis, who lives in Iredell County, North Carolina, added that her faith has helped her through the tragedy of losing Luna.
"I don't understand why He wanted her back home so soon but she belonged to Him first," she said in her statement, and said that her family "will be forever grateful for the four and a half years He blessed us with" with Luna.
There were scant details Friday afternoon about other storm-related fatalities. Helene is blamed for at least 15 deaths in Georgia alone, according to the governor's office. Wright, the Blackshear police chief, and Vernon Leon Davis’ siblings said Davis loved being a firefighter and helping others, including the inmates he oversaw in the decades he worked at Ware State Prison. While there, Davis had led a program that trained inmates in firefighting and they would respond to certain fires.
“He was helping teach the prisoners a skill for whenever they got out,” said Lester, who is 57 and lives in Culloden, Georgia.
According to his Facebook page, where his appreciation for life was apparent, Davis, 69, started at the prison in 1989. Among his surviving relatives are his wife, two adult sons, a brother and two sisters.
“He loved his family. He helped anybody, anytime that he could, and he was just a man of integrity,” Lester said.
James Davis, 71, said growing up, he and his siblings moved around a lot because their father was in the military. He said they lived in Germany twice; in Fort Knox, Kentucky; and in Fort Hood, Texas, now known as Fort Cavazos. But no matter where life took them, he and his brother were always close.
“We were best buddies,” he said. “We did pretty much everything together.”
In one of his last Facebook posts, his brother shared an image that read: “Waking up to see another day is a blessing. Don’t take it for granted. Make it count and be happy that you’re alive.”
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