'I swam out of my home' - Floridians reel from Helene

A wall of seawater from the deadly Hurricane Helene forced Briana Gagnier and her family to swim out of their home on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Ms Gagnier, who lives in Holmes Beach north of Sarasota, had stayed behind with her family to protect their one-storey property.

She placed sandbags at every door and moved belongings on to tall furniture to keep them dry. She even used towels in a vain effort to stem the storm surge.

Then came a loud bang.

Their garage door broke open violently - caving in to the deluge. Water quickly rose to their shoulders, forcing them to escape.

"Everyone was screaming and panicking," she told the BBC. "Whatever your worst idea of what this storm is - that is what we're seeing."

She and her family ran across the street to a neighbour’s house, where they ended up rescuing two elderly people whose home had burst into flames.

She said the blaze appeared to be linked to a golf cart battery.

Looking around, she said she saw couches, chairs, a bench and even a car float by. The water was above her mailbox for part of the evening, she added.

"I just can't believe this is real. The eye of the storm didn't even hit us straight on," said Ms Gagnier. "This island is completely devastated. Everywhere I look, devastation."

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Briana Gagnier says the streets look like white water rapids

She is one of many Floridians along the state’s Big Bend Coast who are reeling from the aftermath of Helene, which forecasters said was unusually large for a Gulf hurricane.

The deadly category four storm made landfall in Florida on Thursday evening, before weakening to a tropical depression as it churned inland through Georgia and into North Carolina and Tennessee.

There were 20 known fatalities from the storm as of Friday afternoon, including 11 in Georgia alone. At least five other people were killed in Florida and two more in North Carolina.

Four million households were without electricity by Friday lunchtime across the south-eastern US.

Michael Bobbit, who lives on Cedar Key, told the BBC his house, which sits atop a hill, "miraculously survived, but the island is totally devastated".

In a video he posted on social media, he described the carnage: "Entire houses are missing or flattened in on themselves, the hardware store is gone, the downtown Jiffy [food market] completely destroyed, the post office completely destroyed.

"It’s hard to take in. However bad we imagined it would be, it’s so much worse in the daylight."

Mr Bobbit said he believes it will take years for the small island of 720 people to recover.

Michael Bobbit showing the destruction on Cedar Key

A man and his dog were rescued by a US Coast Guard helicopter after his 36ft sailboat took on water.

The man, whom the Coast Guard did not name, was sailing 25 miles off the coast of Sanibel Island when he was caught by the hurricane. He called Channel 16 - the emergency channel for marine radios - to summon help.

Thousands of water rescues were also carried out inland throughout flooded neighbourhoods, including in Atlanta, Georgia, where an apartment building was evacuated amid flooding.

ML Ferguson, a resident of Anna Maria Island, Florida, told the BBC the roads around had morphed into rivers amid a storm surge of up to 10ft (3m).

When she returned to her home late on Thursday, she found it, too, had been deluged.

"Oh my gosh, it's literally up to the second step," she told the BBC in a phone interview, before quickly hanging up and rushing to stop more water from coming in.

In Tallahassee, Florida, some residents like Cainnon Gregg had hunkered down to ride out the storm. Mr Gregg, who stayed at a friend’s shelter, said he wanted to remain close to the water to check on his oyster farm as soon as it was safe to do so.

He had spent the last few days trying to protect it by sinking it into the ocean bed.

His farm was once destroyed before, during Hurricane Michael - a category five that hit the Florida panhandle in 2018 - and he said he was determined to learn from that lesson.

“Hopefully, and nothing is for certain, the farm is sitting nice and safe on the bottom,” he said ahead of the storm. “But anything could happen.”