Anyone heard from
@Tommy_Taylor_1972 ?
Thank you for asking GT33. When I learned before midnight last Thursday that the hurricane was turning eastward and not hit Tallahassee and then the farm in south Georgia, I took off to my primary home in Augusta, which was predicted to be in the new path. The drive was not too bad going up I 75 then through Milledgeville to Augusta. I arrived around 4 am when the winds were beginning to pick up. By 6:30, there were Category 1 strength winds 85 mph in my neighborhood 4 miles NE of the August National. All heck broke loose and with 100 year old pine trees coming down all over Augusta and hitting many homes. I did not have a large tree go down on my lot and the house was not hit. Several close neighbor's homes were destroyed. We were without electricity 4 days and without cellular and internet 5 days, better off than many in the Augusta and Aiken SC area. The hurricane made a bee line from Valdosta to Augusta destroying most areas along the way. Pecan and pine trees, cotton, corn, and peanuts were mostly destroyed.
The people in the original path from landfall thorough Tallahassee through Macon and Atlanta and beyond were very fortunate that it took a turn to the right as it made landfall. Since most In Augusta were asleep and expected only rain at time of the turn, it was a complete surprise to those along the new path. It will be several more weeks before electricity is returned to many in this area and throughout the path across Georgia. Crews from Texas to New Jersey are here working on the lines. Most our local Georgia Power crews had deployed to North Florida thinking the hurricane would go through Tallahassee and north. Those guys are real heroes, wherever they wound up.
The "surprise turn" of the path caused delays in state and federal emergency response because the counties in the original path asked the governor to request federal emergency assistance. The counties in the changed path were only to be provided emergency response assistance to covering sheltering costs only. It was pretty much the same for South Carolina county coverage requests, them thinking also that the path would be further to the west. My question is why, with all our weather forecasting technologies, emergency command center operations, means of communications and alerting, etc. that the people on the changed "surprise path" were not pre-warned and then alerted to prepare for this hurricane at least a little bit. Just like the Ashville NC floods are worse that their previous worst flood 100 years ago, I counted over 100 rings in the logs of pine trees fallen in my neighborhood.
