BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Louisiana first responders, including the Baton Rouge Fire Department, are still stationed in the southeast part of the country to help the areas hit by Hurricane Helene.

“We’re going road by road, looking at every structure, opening up a lot of roads, there’s still a lot of roads that are closed by downed power lines, trees blocking roads,” said Baton Rouge Fire Chief, Michael Kimble.

Chief Kimble has been in South Carolina since Saturday, along with other members from Baton Rouge, East Side, and Zachary fire departments. They are part of an urban search and rescue team with the Louisiana Fire Marshal and East Baton Rouge Emergency Medical Services.

“We’ve assisted a lot of folks to get out of their homes by opening the roads. They weren’t trapped in their homes by a tree falling and pinning them down, they were trapped in their homes because they couldn’t leave due to power lines down and trees down,” added Kimble, “it’s like any storm we’ve seen back in Louisiana, there are certain areas that have destruction, and there are certain areas that have very little damage.”

That’s not the case for other areas, according to Marc Creswell with Acadian Ambulance.

“In this case, there’s a lot of homes that are just wiped completely off the face of the earth,” said Creswell, “it just came in and just plowed through like a giant bulldozer.”

Creswell is the Director of Acadian Ambulance Air Med Division, he is stationed in North Carolina. Creswell says the level of destruction he is seeing is surreal.

“The town of Chimney Rock is completely wiped off the face of the earth and dumped into Lake Lure, and there’s numerous other cities that the majority of the buildings are wiped out or severely compromised,” explained Creswell.

The Acadian Ambulance crews are there to run 9-1-1 calls alongside the local first responders.

“When a hurricane strikes an area, it also strikes the first responders, not only their homes but their jobs, these guys have been running nonstop for four or five days, so we provide relief for them,” added Creswell.

Creswell says they don’t know how long they’ll be there, but based on what he has seen, he thinks their help will be needed for a while longer.

WAFB’s parent company Gray Media is partnering with the Salvation Army for Hurricane Helene relief. You can find out how to help those affected by the storm on the Salvation Army website .

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