St. Simons Island - Friday in coastal Georgia was a day of cleanup for some and feeling thankful for many.
“I feel awful for our neighbors in Florida,” said Cap Fendig, the Glynn County commissioner who represents St. Simons Island. “It was just not our time on this one. As history shows a hurricane can come anytime from anywhere and can have far-reaching devastation to inland communities.”
After a devastating hit to the western coast of Florida, Ian left Georgia lightly marred. St. Simons storm damage was limited to some downed branches, a missing step from a beach crossover and a boardwalk, apparently lifted by rising waters, sitting unevenly. The soaring Sidney Lanier Bridge, which spans the Brunswick River, reopened Friday morning after being closed as a precaution Thursday.
Elsewhere along the coast, residents in historic downtown St. Mary’s started the day assessing knee-deep flooding in the central business district while most flights at Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport were canceled. The Savannah airport remained open and advised travelers to check flight status ahead of time.
“We really dodged a bullet on this one but we continue to have the folks in Florida, who have literally been devastated by this storm, in our thoughts and prayers,” Gov. Brian Kemp said from the state’s operation center Friday morning. “We stand ready to use our resources to help our friends and neighbors in a time of need.”
In that vein, an eight-member crew from Marietta Power headed to South Carolina on Friday to assist in the Myrtle Beach area.
“We are thankful our community was spared power outages,” the city of Marietta said. “We are grateful we have highly skilled members of our team who are willing to leave their families to help those in need but we will anxiously await their safe return to Marietta.”
Credit: City of Marietta
Credit: City of Marietta
Port operations remained at a standstill Friday morning but Kemp said the Port Authority and Coast Guard would work to get traffic flowing again.
Georgia National Guard Major General Tom Carden said the agency was ready to assist with logistics, transportation, debris removal or security as needed. The Georgia National Guard has 500 people ready to deploy and could quickly scale up, if needed, Carden said.
On Tybee Island, one of the lowest-lying places in the state, city manager Shawn Gillen said Friday morning that the island had not experienced any major impacts.
”We are concerned about flooding during the next high tide cycle at around noon today,” Gillen said. “We may see flooding at that time.”
As the day’s high tide began to recede just after noon, Alan Robertson, the resilience project manager for the city, said Tybee was breathing a sigh of relief. After touring the island, Robertson said some beaches saw minor erosion, but that water did not reach the sand dunes and no flooding was observed. He called the erosion typical of what the island sees after a strong Nor’easter in winter, but nothing compared to the damage Hurricane Irma caused to Tybee’s beaches and several homes in 2017.
”We really lucked out on this one,” he said.
Surfers like Chris Hollis took advantage of the unusually high chop at Tybee.
“We don’t exactly live at the Outer Banks so when you get waves like this you’ve got to seize the opportunity, man,” he said. “Our waves are usually like 1 to 2 foot which is not very big. It’s kind of hard to surf that.”
Georgia Power’s outage map was showing only a small number of customers without power Friday morning, mostly around Savannah and the Golden Isles.
The Georgia Department of Natural Resources plans to start the process to reopen shellfish harvests on Monday. Harvests were closed Wednesday as a safety precaution primarily for clams, which can be contaminated by bacteria carried in storm surges said Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for the coastal resources division of DNR. If the coast receives more than three feet of tidal surge or three inches of rain, DNR will conduct a water quality test.
”If we calculate it, and it’s less than that, we can make a judgment call after we coordinate with the FDA,” Jones said. “We’re looking at starting the process to reopen on Monday, but that doesn’t mean we will be ready to reopen Monday.”
- Bert Roughton Jr., Asia Burns and Rosana Hughes contributed to this report
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