For the first time since the day after the remnants of Hurricane Helene tore through East Tennessee, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has reported there are no active leads on missing people.
But that doesn’t mean everyone is accounted for.
“The numbers provided in TEMA’s flash reports did not represent the total number of missing individuals,” TBI spokesperson Leslie Earhart told Knox News in an email. “Those numbers represented public leads that still need to be cleared.”
The actual number of people who remain missing can only be found by contacting local sheriff’s offices, Earhart said.
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How many people in Tennessee have died or are still missing?
As of Oct. 21, the date of the Helene last flash report published by the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, the state identified 17 deaths from the storms.
The agency will not release the names, ages or hometowns of those who died, though some individual community leaders shared the news as they mourned in the days after the storm.