Hurricane Season Begins, While Georgians Are Still Recovering From Last Year

Hurricane season officially starts June 1, though a tropical storm may already be forming in the Caribbean. Even as Georgians contemplate this year’s storms, some are still recovering from last year, and the year before.

Hurricane Matthew traveled up the Georgia coast and made landfall in South Carolina in October 2016. Just 11 months later, what had been Hurricane Irma, but was by then a tropical storm, crossed into Georgia from Florida’s Gulf coast, and it still flooded people clear across the state, on Georgia’s Atlantic coast.

“A lot of people had just recovered from Matthew when Irma hit,” said Elaine Anderson, who lives and works on Tybee Island.

She’d evacuated for Matthew, but stayed at home for Irma – until she couldn’t.

“It was high tide, full moon, the wind was blowing,” she said. “The water was coming up the streets. I live in a ground floor apartment, and I could see the water just rolling my way.”

She ended up having to leave her ground-floor apartment as the water rose, and went to stay with her boss, whose house has two floors.

Anderson said she’s kind of dreading hurricane season this year.

So is Amanda Northrup. Her home on Tybee was flooded in both storms, and she’s still living in a rented apartment, waiting for money from FEMA to get her house raised up on stilts.

After the two storms, she said, it’s sort of like people have PTSD.

“It’s terrifying. People are talking about it and I feel myself tense up at just the thought of going through it again,” she said. “It’s unbelievable how it changes your life. You’re just waiting for these storms to come in.”

Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Matthew were both billion-dollar-plus disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As destructive as they were, Georgia’s state climatologist, Bill Murphey, said they both could have been worse, had they hit Georgia directly when they were more powerful.

“We’ve been very lucky to not have a hurricane like Hugo come back,” he said.

Hurricane Hugo was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in South Carolina in 1989. Matthew was Category 1.

As for this coming Atlantic hurricane season, forecasters from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say they expect a normal, or above normal number of storms.

Karen Penick, who’s lived on Tybee Island for eight years, said she’s done everything she can think of to prepare.

Her house didn’t get flooded in Matthew, but Irma ruined everything on her first floor. So she’s replacing things with a future flood in mind. She’s using outdoor furniture inside her house. She took out the lower cabinets in her kitchen, and now has a stainless steel kitchen sink. Everything on her first floor – except for the appliances – can be hosed down, she said.

Her view is, it’s all part of living on a coastal island.

“It’s not for sissies,” she said.