Helene blew ashore in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday as it packed winds of 140 mph and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee.

Tangled piles of nail-spiked lumber and displaced boats littered the streets. A house lay crushed under a fern-covered oak tree toppled by the winds.

The storm made landfall late Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour in the rural Big Bend area.

Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the entire southeastern U.S. on Friday, killing at least 40 people in four states, snapping towering oaks like twigs, tearing apart homes and sending rescue crews on desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.

Emergency crews rushed to rescue people trapped in flooded homes after Helene roared ashore as a powerful Category 4 hurricane in Florida, generating a massive storm surge and knocking out power to millions of customers in several states.

Authorities rescued people trapped by floodwaters and more than 3 million customers were in the dark across much of the southeastern U.S. as Hurricane Helene weakened to a tropical storm over Georgia early Friday after making landfall overnight in northwestern Florida as a Category 4 storm.