Editor’s note: There have been hundreds of social media posts about how the national media has not reported on the damage to Augusta. Hurricane Helene was catastrophic in the CSRA, but help is on the way.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) visited Augusta on Monday to review storm damage, get updates on recovery, and provide the latest information on what state agencies are providing.
A news conference was held outside the James Brown Arena, where personnel from electric utilities and companies were staging with their vehicles. Those then fanned out across Richmond County.
Joined by First Lady Marty Kemp, the Governor was surrounded by a phalanx of representatives from the Georgia Emergency Management Agency (GEMA), the Georgia National Guard and local, state, and federal elected officials and emergency management agencies.
“This storm literally spared no one,” he said. “Across our state, and really across the entire southeast where this storm hit. We have had 25 known fatalities in the state of Georgia. At this point, there are media reports of 90 to 100 total for this storm among all the states where it was so hard hit.”
Before landing in Augusta, Kemp flew over Richmond, Columbia, and McDuffie Counties. He said the path of destruction looked like a 250-mile-wide tornado had gone through.
He said Congressmen Rick Allen (R-GA 12) and Austin Scott (R-GA 08) traveled with him on Sunday and he spoke with President Joe Biden last evening and explained the level of devastation.
Just know that we will work in a bipartisan way on disaster relief in this state, with our federal, state, and local partners,” he promised. “We have submitted our expedited emergency declaration. This is something that’s very rare, but this will help us, and I feel certain it’ll be approved by the President and our federal partners. This will help us get money flowing quicker to our state.”
Chris Stallings, Director of GEMA/HS, said they will begin setting up points of distribution, or PODs, across all areas.
“What those PODs will give you are water, some food, other cleaning supplies, and basic human and health needs,” he explained. “You could pick up a toothbrush, anything like that. And finally, fuel, we understand is a significant resource. It’s just a matter of getting power to those gas stations, so there’s plenty of fuel as soon as we can turn some power back on, so there’s no need to run on fumes.”
Kemp said at one point, Georgia had 1.3 million customers without power. In past recovery efforts, Georgia has been able to count on mutual aid from power companies in Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina. However, Helene left those states with as much, and in some locations, more damage. ABD asked Stallings how that impacted Georgia’s ability to get assistance and what the state did to fill the gap.
“We went further, faster,” he said. “We’ve brought it in from Texas, we brought it in from New Jersey, we’ve brought it in from Missouri, we’ve brought it in from Maryland, we’ve brought it in from Montana. “With the governor signing in an early state of emergency, it allowed us to go ahead and EMAC (Emergency Management Assistance Compact) those requests in, we’ve got a lot of contracts that we’ve turned on.”
Prior to the Kemp news conferences, representatives from NGOs met with the media at Golden Harvest Food Bank. Amy Breitmann, President and CEO, said they requested outside assistance.
“At this time, we’ve called in both state and national resources to help in our response,” she explained. “We have Feeding the Carolinas, Feeding Georgia, and Feeding America with literal boots on the ground, heading this direction, with resources, including staffing, food, and water being trucked in. This is a much bigger problem than Golden Harvest can handle. This is a really a national level crisis and so, we are doing our best to take direction from Feeding America and to accept the resources that we need in order to respond.”
She said they have received help removing perishable items from both Augusta and their Aiken location.
“Golden Harvest Aiken, we are currently having another food bank come and rescue all of our frozen products. Our generators are no longer working. We were out of diesel,” she said. “We did the same thing with our warehouses here. The Atlanta Community Food Bank was able to come and rescue some of our frozen food yesterday because it was going to go bad. We didn’t have diesel fuel.”
She said, sadly, The Masters Table Soup Kitchen on Fenwick Street is closed and will remain so. She said they hope to re-open soon with help from Feeding America.
GHFB is working with other NGOs, including United Way of the CSRA to identify locations throughout the county where distribution sites can be set up without overlapping.
“At United Way, we’re just looking at where the resources are and then where there is need and trying to connect the two most efficiently, so that those who want to contribute have an easy way to do that. And on the other end, for people that need things, we’re able to meet those needs as well,” Brittany Burnett, President and CEO of UWCSRA, told ABD. “It’s complicated, and the needs are changing every day.”
Breitmann and Kemp both asked Georgians to try to be patient as they ramp up to deal with a disaster unlike any seen before.
“This is a very long recovery, and we’re just in the triage stage where we’re going to try to keep people alive and getting food and water and able to get to resources until we have power and water restored,” said Breitmann.
Kemp said, “My last message to people would be, we will not waver until we get everything put back together. It may take us a while, but just know this team will work 24/7 to get your power back on, to get roads clear, to get water operating, make sure that we’re getting our state back to normal. This is obviously going to be a very long recovery, but we will not waver in that recovery.”
Information about the PODs being set up by GEMA will be available at https://gema.georgia.gov.
