Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 30 people in four states, snapping trees like twigs, tearing apart homes and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said dozens of people were still trapped in buildings damaged by the Category 4 hurricane. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph when it made landfall late Thursday in a sparsely populated region in Florida's rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where Florida’s Panhandle and peninsula meet. But the damage extended hundreds of miles to the north, with flooding as far away as North Carolina, where a lake used in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam. Multiple hospitals in southern Georgia were without power, and one in Tennessee was closed. Helene’s devastation comes as climate change exacerbates conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful hurricanes and typhoons, sometimes in a matter of hours. Read more: https://www.9news.com/article/news/nation-world/helene-weakens-to-a-tropical-storm/507-5fda97de-ed75-4e4c-8358-9a15f45d12cf Video via CNN. More local videos here: https://bit.ly/2Pa0d1l Subscribe to NEXT: http://bit.ly/2eP1GwI Stay connected: 9NEWS Website: http://www.9news.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ilike9news Twitter: https://twitter.com/9NEWS Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/9newsdenver/ Download the 9NEWS App: https://www.9news.com/appredirect/ Sign up for the 9NEWSLETTER: https://www.9news.com/email 9NEWS (KUSA) is located in Denver, Colorado.