At the Friendly Express gas station, a man was buying a tallboy "Hurricane" brand malt liquor while another man bought more than two dozen lottery tickets.
It's that kind of a quiet Tuesday in the coastal city of 16,000 where everyone east of Interstate 95 is under mandatory evacuation orders by Gov. Brian Kemp ahead of Hurricane Dorian, which could reach Georgia by Wednesday.
There wasn't any kind of rush on gas or stampeding into grocery stores the day after the long holiday weekend.
But locals continue to move inland.
One of the largest centers of activity was people trying to catch Glynn County school buses to a Red Cross shelter in Columbus. Over two days, about 400 people who couldn't evacuate due to cost or disability will have caught the bus, said Marty Simmons, director of pupil transportation for the schools.
One of them was 56-year-old Theresa Cooper. She said this is her third time evacuating. Usually her daughter takes her, but her daughter is a private bus driver who was evacuating people herself. So Cooper got on the school bus with her nephew. It isn't as easy for her to evacuate because both her legs are amputated.
Cooper said she left home because she gets dialysis three times a week and didn't want to be somewhere without electricity.
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
When she evacuated for Hurricane Irma, she said her home was without power for five days after she came back.
She returned home after Irma to find a tree had missed her home by a half inch.
"A little more, it would have taken (the) whole back half of my bedroom off," Cooper said.
It was her neighbor's tree and it would have landed on her bed.
On the bus with her was Eddie Wright and his 7-year-old dog Vino. Wright said he's spent about 40 of his 68 years in Brunswick.
"I'm just grateful and thankful to be able to evacuate," Wright said.
He doesn't think Dorian is going to be that bad, but it isn't worth finding out.
"It can be really tragic," he said.
Simmons said they sent nine school buses, seven of which will stay to bring people back. Some of the bus drivers are also evacuating with their families aboard.
Looking out over the pickup point in Lanier Plaza shopping center, Simmons said all of the cars left in the parking lot for Irma were damaged by floods.
"We prepare for every storm and pray," he said.
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
Credit: ccompton@ajc.com
About a half dozen homeless people came to The Well, a church program that provides showers and laundry for those without in Brunswick, on Tuesday to find the shelter closed due to the storm.
They were waiting outside, hoping someone would come by to offer them work so they could make enough money to find somewhere to hunker down for the storm. They declined to give their names.
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