Helene: Preparedness, Blessings, and Tender Mercies

Full disclosure, some of this was written on my Facebook page already and this will be a long post. But it’s for my records, so read it or don’t 😉

Day 1

When hurricanes hit the southeastern coast, we usually prepare ourselves, but not in the way you’d think. We make sure that we have supplies so that those who actually are affected by the hurricane can drive to our town to restock or we make sure we get stuff to help out those more southern or more eastern towns. In addition to the abnormality of hurricanes actually ever hitting us, even the weathermen said it’d head to the western side of Georgia and if we got anything, it’d be a little bit of rain. Thursday was a gloomy day. Apparently there was a tornado warning as I was driving my kids to school, but for some reason I’d turn off all weather alerts or forgot to turn them own after one of the many times I’d had to reset my phone due to delayed text messaging. I was already running late because my friend Krista usually drops Jane off at my house after she drops off the rest of her kids at the elementary school, but she said the elementary car line was moving so slow that morning. I guess now we know why. I think a lot of parents were more aware of the weather than I was and were waiting till the last minute to take their kids to school because the neighboring county had already canceled school for the day. It didn’t matter that Jane and Harvey were late because apparently the school sent out an email right before the start of day saying they’d have a delayed start due to the tornado warning. I guess I should maybe turn on a bit more notifications, but I really do like to avoid being pestered by my phone all day. We waited inside the main area of the church for school to start. After I dropped them off, I went next door and played pickleball with some dear friends of mine at the stake center. We played for two hours. We decided to get lunch afterwards at chick-fil-a. If I had known I’d be cooking three squares for as many people as I did for the next week, I think I would’ve savored that lunch out a bit more, but it was fun regardless. Even though there had been a tornado warning and it had rained all day, I had Marco Polo’d my sister and told her, “eh, we’ll get a bit of rain, that’s it.” I really had NO idea how crazy it was going to get. Fortunately, I had heard about the hurricane (thanks Lindsay) so I had been to Costco the day before and had stocked up, so I thought that even if we did have some of the outskirt effects or a shortage of supplies in the store, I’d be prepared.

Day 2

I woke up around 3 AM to the winds howling outside my window. My anxiety kicked in and I thought about all of the things in our backyard and front porch that could get blown away. I remembered I had left my gardening gloves on the table on my front porch. I lay in the comfort of my bed debating whether it was worth facing the weather for them. After remembering I also had pillows, delicate pots, etc. I decided to go check on them. The front porch looked unscathed. Nothing had moved. Not even the pillows or gloves. The front of the house was pretty protected because the winds were moving north and so they were blowing over the back of our house, thus why nothing had moved. Regardless, I moved things around a bit to give them a bit more protection from the wind, then went back to bed. I didn’t even bother with the stuff in the backyard because it is my kids stuff and if it blows away… well oh well. If I had thought the winds at 3 AM were crazy, I had no idea what was to come. At about 5 AM the winds really picked up. The whole house creaked from the movement. I looked out my window and heard more creaking, I was terrified that the window would get sucked right out of our wall. At that moment I was so grateful we had let the kids have a sleepover in the downstairs living room. I couldn’t move from staring out my upstairs window though. The trees were bending in the wind. The wind let out a continuous whistling with thundering gusts that would come through frequently. Later we had varying reports that there were 11 tornadoes in the area, then they determined that it was actually the hurricane that caused that damage and it wasn’t the tropical storm that they had predicted, nor the CAT 1 that they had reported right after the storm, but based off of the damage, the winds must’ve been in the CAT 2 range at least but they had evidence of at least two tornadoes that had touched down in our area alone.

As we lay in bed, waiting for the storm to pass, I sat there praying for safety for us and the kids. I was shaking in fear. Meanwhile, Andy was next to me, scrolling instagram- still with service due to first net (first responders internet). Andy was made for natural disasters. Some of the most endearing times in our marriage were when he’s had to step up and be the hero as the world around us struggles (Hurricane Harvey, COVID, and now Helene). Once again, he had to literally step out of bed and head in to be a hero. He wasn’t supposed to work that day, but the person who was supposed to take over from the night shift never showed. I’m not sure if they could even get a hold of the one on call because cell towers and power lines were all hit. Troy, Andy’s boss, couldn’t even get out of his neighborhood because trees had fallen and blocked the entrance to his neighborhood. Andy, in his 20 year old jeep (that recently got nicely tuned up by some of our favorite people, the Rileys) headed into work. He worked a full shift before he got home which was around dinner time. He called me from the hospital number to tell me that he didn’t have any cell service there and if I needed him, I needed to call the hospital number. Because I was trying to figure out how to deal without power and feed four kids, I called him a few times. I said, “I’m sure you’re not too busy, surely no one would drive in unless it was absolutely an emergency.” He just laughed. He said people were still coming in with coughs and cold. It was busy for a normal day, but way too busy when the world was in shambles.

I also called my mom to see if she could help me find a place that was selling generators. Of course they were all sold out in the area and the soonest one could be shipped to us was about a week away. We went ahead and ordered one through Costco, knowing that we’d want one even if we survived this bit without one, but also without knowing when we’d get power back, knowing something was on its way to help us out brought some measure of comfort. As the day went on, the kids got hungry. I had pulled hotdogs out earlier in the week for one of our dinners, so we got the propane fire pit going in the back yard, skewered the hotdogs and cooked them up. To be honest… Max may have had that idea. I was busy trying to figure out a plan for the next unknown number of days.

As the evening drew near, a neighbor two doors down offered to let us use their propane tank to cook up meat we had had in our fridge. I had ribs that were supposed to be for Sunday’s dinner, hamburger meat, and … more hot dogs. We cooked it all up and shared with any neighbor that came by. After that, more people came over and we shared all of the melting ice cream in our outdoor freezer. Embarrassingly, I still had about a garbage back of popsicles and ice cream I had to throw out the next day. But at least we could share with as many as wanted some.

Hurricane Helene’s Devastation

Let me explain a little bit about WHY it was so devastating for our area… plus some interesting things I learned about this storm.

First of all, like I said earlier– our area does NOT get hurricanes. Not really. We get the remnants of hurricanes. A crazy thunderstorm at its worst. That means that the landscape in this area is NOT used to that severe of winds. Their roots are shallow. They’re also shallow because we have red clay for dirt. But anyway, this is why so many trees were down after the storm. Structurally we weren’t prepared for the storm because again… we do not get hurricanes. Our Georgia Power hadn’t made any preparations or planned our power infrastructure to be prepared for big gusts of wind. Trees were around power lines and thus took them out, the pull on the power lines led to metal power poles SNAPPING in half. This is why it took a whole week to get power back to most people (however, some are still waiting). Another thing that happened was because the forecast predicted the west side and not the east side, they had sent extra supplies to chains such as Home Depot, grocery stores, etc. to the west side of Georgia in preparation for the storm. This just reiterates the fact that you need to be prepared individually, because those who depended on the government to bail them out of this situation were in dire straits.

Another interesting side effect of this storm has been the bugs. I read a news report that first day that said there was a “black mass” in the center of the eye. On further investigation it was winged creatures that had been trapped in the calm of the eye, surrounded by the 60-140 MPH winds. These “winged creatures” included birds and bugs from the tropics. We quickly noticed the influx of mosquitoes the first day after the storm. Our morning routine added in applying bug spray and sunscreen since we’d be outside most of the day.

Bees, yellow jackets, and wasps also became a major nuisance because their homes had been washed or blown away. In their homeless rage they’d follow us around, attracted by the food we had. I, Andy, and a few other little kids wound up with nasty bee stings. They ended up leaving nasty bruise looking marks that spread with the venom. I’m not sure if that is a normal reaction for me these days because it has been a while since I’ve been stung or if these too were winged creatures brought here by the storm.

As you can see, we’re only on day two of the storm, so I’m going to write a new blog post for day three which will summarize all of the preparedness things we had and want to do better the “next time.” (let’s hope there isn’t one, but at least we’ll be prepared).