Evacuees happy to escape Irma, but ‘there’s no place like home’

To escape Hurricane Irma, Chadwick Milton said he had just 45 minutes Friday to pack up a few items before boarding a Glynn County school bus headed to Columbus.

“I’m taking it all in,” Milton said Saturday. “It’s nice. It’s more modern than a lot of stuff I see in Brunswick.”

Milton, 47, was one of more than 500 evacuees who were bused to the Columbus Civic Center as Hurricane Irma churned toward Florida. Residents in the coastal Georgia county were under a mandatory evacuation order.

With earlier reports of the storm, Milton said he thought the evacuation wouldn’t come until Saturday, but he was called Friday and told the departure was moved up a day. “I didn’t have time to get stuff together like I thought I would have,” Milton said while taking a smoke break outside the Civic Center. “I already had been thinking about things I might want to take.”

This is not the first storm that has forced Milton from his home. He left Brunswick during Hurricane Matthew last year. He hopes the hurricane turns toward the Gulf, missing Florida and south Georgia.

“I’m hoping it maybe goes into the Gulf and keep going west,” he said. “You might say praying. I hope it goes that route.”

For Isabell Berg, the Hinesville, Ga., mother said the storm couldn’t have struck at a worse time for her family. Berg, 46, said it felt good to be out of danger of the storm, but it’s still scary.

“We don’t know what we are coming home to,” she said. “I got this double whammy. I have been out of work for four months ‘cause I had back surgery three weeks ago. You know things were already tight. Now, I don’t know.”

She’s wondering if she and her daughter, Sierra, will get the assistance they need. Before the evacuation order, Berg said her area wasn’t informed as much as the folks in Florida.

“I checked the weather on my phone, woke up at 9 in the morning and seen the mandatory evacuation for Saturday morning,” she said. “I didn’t know where to turn. We were told a bus is leaving from the YMCA. We packed up what we could carry, me and my daughter. We had adequate time to pack.”

The schools have all closed in their area. She still feels uncomfortable in a new city and not knowing what’s happening at home. “There is no place like home,” Berg said.

Dean Warfield, 66, of Glynn County, said his entire complex of about 80 residents at Buckingham Terrace was ordered to leave the senior community.

“If you get far enough away from it, you are probably alright,” he said.

Warfield said the six-hour trip to Columbus is his first visit.

Although Warfield said he plans to go shopping, he was already missing home. “I don’t like being away from home,” he said. “Way out here, it’s too far. I can’t take a taxi or nothing. I don’t know anybody. I’ve never been here.”

Inside the arena, he also didn’t like the low temperature on the air conditioning. “It’s cold in there,” he said. “Keep the germs down, they say. It’s a little too cool for me.”

Roosevelt Norris, 69, said he’s a lifelong resident of Brunswick and rode the bus with some special-needs people. He serves as an attendant with the disabled.

Norris said he was excited about getting a visit from his brother who lives in Columbus. “I called him last night,” he said. “He said he was going to come down and see me today.”

This story was originally published September 9, 2017 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Evacuees happy to escape Irma, but ‘there’s no place like home’."