I’ve made the drive across I-16 too many times to count. I’ve been making it even more frequently over the past five or so years, while trying to decide if I live in the metro Atlanta area or on the Georgia coast. The drive Saturday was different.
I left Savannah about noon, most of the city including my home without electricity. I was at least able to drive, after a couple of neighbors helped me remove large tree limbs from the top of my car. The main trunk of the fallen tree remained suspended slightly above the vehicle, caught by the power line it ripped from the side of my home during its descent.
After just a few interstate miles it quickly became clear that this was not an isolated problem – though I already knew that from news reports. The large and high signs usually displaying gas and diesel prices at truck stops were dark. Before long I noticed billboards and GDOT road signs, and even a few of those truck stop signs damaged or gone entirely.
By the time I approached Metter and traveled on to Soperton there were trees still on the highway, with crews only having removed the parts that extended into the travel lanes in order to get the freeway open. At Dublin – well known to those of us traveling from Atlanta to Savannah or St Simons as a good “half way stop”- cars were backed up onto the interstate. The traffic lights at the top of the exit were out. I had already received word from a friend who knew I was on the road that they, too, had gas stations without power.
Conditions became much more normal once I passed Dublin and the track the eye of Helene had traveled. There were still some signs that nature had visited in an ugly way, but not nearly what I saw for the previous hundred or so miles.
Landfall was along the Big Bend coast of Florida, near Perry. Like so many of the towns impacted from Florida to Ohio and Indiana, Perry isn’t big enough to register with the press, and is one of those places you have to go to on purpose. It’s off the beaten path. Helene beat a path with wind and rain with devastation that we’re just now coming to grips with. It is historic.
Valdosta has had more than its fair share of severe weather, from Hurricanes like Michael, to Tornadoes, and even a violent incident with just straight line winds. I often talk to one of the coordinators of disaster response, a Program Director for Second Harvest of South Georgia. I’ve told her recently after a storm “we have to quit meeting like this”.
I haven’t talked to her yet this time, as she’s had her hands full. Per Facebook posts, her own house had multiple trees fall on it, injuring her husband. An ER trip was involved once the winds died down, and she notes he’ll be Ok. This storm spared very few in its path, and I note with cases like hers that every first responder is also dealing with their own losses of power, perhaps property, or even family injury.
Atlantans know of places like Dublin and Valdosta because they’re an oasis along the freeway to provide a good rest stop. You’ll often hear phrases like “I stop there because there’s nothing on I-16”. D.C. and New York media long ago coined the term “flyover country” for the part of the nation that separates the east and west coastal elites from each other.
Atlantans don’t have a term for it, but there is much of the state which they’re only familiar with based on interstate rest stops. This part of Georgia is hurting, and will need more of us to get off those interstates to tell the stories.
Many of the print publications that run these columns are along the I-16 corridor. I’ve not yet done a role call to see how many have power and are able to publish. I have through friends and social media seen not just the pictures from well-known places like Augusta National or some of Savannah’s towering moss draped oaks toppled from the roots, but places like Hazlehurst, where the downtown took a direct hit.
The damage isn’t just structural. It’s economic.
This is farm country. Crops yet to be harvested are likely beyond salvaging. Farmers can’t just replace them. That’s a good part of this year’s income, literally gone with the wind.
Two restaurants I like to frequent for breakfast – Lou Ann’s in Dublin and Clary’s Café in Savannah – had similar messages on Facebook. Both hoped to open soon after the storm passed to serve their customers (as well as provide their staff with work). Eventually, the realization of a prolonged power outage meant that food – a significant cost of their business – had spoiled and would have to be thrown out. They would need time to re-stock before they could re-open.
Up the road in North Carolina and Tennessee the news is even more dire, and they’ll likely get the deserved media attention for the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding there in real time. That doesn’t mean that we need to forget our communities here in the Peach State, many of which are a bit off the beaten path.
We have work to do. It’s all of our jobs to ensure that no community is left behind until our state and our communities are healed.