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. 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.