ALAPAHA, Ga. — Linda Hall can’t escape Mother Nature’s wrath.
A severe thunderstorm destroyed her home over Memorial Day weekend, forcing her to live with her daughter a few streets away in tiny Alapaha, a town with fewer residents than some Atlanta apartment buildings. Then last week, Hurricane Helene toppled a massive tree through her daughter’s house and leaving them, like so many in rural Georgia, to pick up the pieces.
“You can open that bedroom door, and you can see the world out there,” she joked. “You can’t ask the Lord to spare you and do unto others. We’re gonna take what God gives and go from there.”
Berrien County, which includes Alapaha, is among the dozens of hard-hit rural areas trying to band together while waiting for electricity to be restored and government aid to arrive. The county is about 200 miles south of Atlanta.
From Valdosta to Augusta, the wreckage Helene left in Georgia is vast and has forced small communities vying for a limited pool of vital resources, including generators, water, ice, tarps and food.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency, or GEMA, has been distributing those goods throughout Berrien County and its county seat of Nashville, where Gov. Brian Kemp visited Tuesday afternoon. Jaclyn Ford, an Alapaha farmer and representative-elect for state House District 170, said more relief is needed, especially at the federal level.
“People are in need,” she said.
As of Tuesday afternoon, 41 Georgia counties, including Berrien, had been federally declared emergency disaster areas, opening up additional recovery resources.
Autumn is peanut and cotton harvesting season, the lifeblood of the region’s economy, but Ford said Helene’s aftermath has shifted all hands to storm recovery.
“Nobody is picking cotton yet,” she said. “You’ve just got to get your community back going first and meet people’s basic needs.”
More than a dozen volunteers spent Tuesday morning at Alapaha Baptist Church cooking barbecue for sandwiches to feed weary Georgia Power line workers, exhausted emergency responders and neighbors. Rhonda Dixon, Jaclyn’s mother, was leading the charge and said they handed out more than 300 meals.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Seeking relief
Kemp and U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff have written letters this week urging the Federal Emergency Management Agency to swiftly declare roughly 90 counties a disaster to immediately free up funds. On Tuesday morning, the White House initially granted that declaration for 11 counties, prompting outrage from several Georgia Republicans.
“Does FEMA not understand that this hurricane cut a 150-mile wide path of destruction from Valdosta to Augusta?” said U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who represents a swath of northeast Georgia that was pummeled by the storm.
Another 30 counties — including Berrien — were added a few hours later.
When speaking to first responders in nearby Douglas, Kemp told them, “I know there was a lot of frustration down here … I explained it was going to create a political firestorm and was sending the wrong signal. They listened to us.”
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Earlier this week, Biden aide Tom Perez told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the White House would move urgently to respond to Kemp’s request for emergency relief, which was seconded by Georgia’s entire delegation.
FEMA sometimes issues the disaster declarations on a rolling basis to free up funds for storm-ravaged counties sooner as it works to complete evaluations on others. That’s what happened after Hurricane Idalia bombarded the Southeast in August 2023.
The feeling of being overlooked was prominent among Berrien County’s farmers. Carlos Vickers, whose family farm near Willacoochee suffered widespread damage from Helene, said it’s valuable for elected officials to be present during these times of crisis. He commended former President Donald Trump for his Monday visit to storm-ravaged Valdosta, about an hour south of Alapaha.
“At least he cared enough to come,” Vickers said.
Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in this year’s upcoming presidential election, will visit Georgia on Wednesday.
‘What can we do?’
An emergency management center was established in Nashville’s City Hall, overseeing relief efforts and connecting state and federal resources with desperate residents.
Neighboring Miller County, which endured Hurricane Michael in 2018, volunteered some of its emergency service leaders to assist. Nashville City Manager Hayden Hancock said everyone is running on adrenaline, saying, “The full weight hasn’t hit me yet.”
If a truck or tractor-trailer could fit in its parking lot, it was likely converted into a relief center. City halls, schools and churches were packed with lines of pickup trucks and cars as people flocked to get gasoline for their generators or ice to preserve food.
While the aid is needed, Jaclyn Ford said nothing can replace electricity. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, Georgia Power’s outage map showed about 2,950 Berrien County residents did not have power — more than 72% of the utility’s customers in the county.
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC
“Power will solve nearly everything,” Ford said.
Hall, whose daughter’s home was crushed by a tree, said she received a tarp from the relief stockpile. But repairing the house — or finding another one — is a tall task.
“I was searching for a house for myself, and now, it’s going to be impossible because everyone is searching for a house,” she said. “What can we do?”
