‘We’re just gamblin’ being in here.’ A week after Helene, Valdosta mom needs help & hope
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How another hurricane has hurt Valdosta
Valdosta, Georgia, is 75 miles inland. But in just over a year, the city has endured three hurricanes that have left lasting impact on residents. We cover the damage here.
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Seven days after Hurricane Helene tore through Valdosta fueled by high Gulf water temperatures, Alice Legier was one of thousands of Georgians still grappling with how to restore her broken home, yearning for any semblance of normalcy.
Wind gusts up to 111 mph blew through Lowndes County, where 120,000 people reside, in the early hours of Sept. 27. The wind rolled through “like a tornado,” Legier said, bringing several tall pine trees down in front of and on top of her home on Park Avenue. One fell directly on her house, breaking through into a corner of her kitchen. The other fell on top of her car, squishing it like a bug under a stick.
Legier’s husband and two kids, her 14-year-old daughter Alice and her 10-year-old son Raphael, were not physically harmed by the storm. But after one week without power, living in the dark with no air conditioning, taking “freezing cold” showers, and enduring a tree halfway through their house with no sign of change on the horizon, the mental toll on her son was evident.
Raphael has autism, Legier said, and he has instances of “stemming” in which he paces and sometimes flaps his arms. Those have been going on since the storm.
“He hasn’t done that in years,” Legier said. “He’s pacing back and forth and back and forth. When he goes back to school I’m going to have to get him someone to talk to because this really did something to him. He won’t leave my side either. He will need some serious help from all of this.”
Legier’s friend gave her a generator and it has kept food in the refrigerator cold. She walks down the road to the gas station every day to buy $40 worth of gas to keep it running. The Legiers sleep with the front door open so it’s cool enough to sleep at night without air conditioning.
Georgia Power had restored about 90% of power to Lowndes County as of Friday, when the Ledger-Enquirer met with Legier. But Legier was one of the unlucky 10% waiting for power restoration.
“Helene caused damage on a scale we’ve never seen before,” said Ashley Tye of the Emergency Management Agency of Lowndes County at a press conference on Oct. 1. “The damage was three to four times greater than Idalia.”
Alice Legier had a few trees fall in her backyard during Idalia and experienced hard rain during Debby, but the devastation she experienced from Hurricane Helene, which made her feel “trapped,” was another level.
Her landlord removed the wide and tall pine trees out of the yard so she could get in and out, but without a working car, Legier didn’t have a lot of options.
As a renter she doesn’t have home insurance. She’s one of hundreds of thousands of people who have filed for FEMA’s financial assistance. It is her first time filing, and she has no idea what to expect.
She said one tree removal service gave her a $7,000 removal quote. Her landlord said they’d come by Oct. 4 to remove it with a crane.
“I do not have that kind of money,” she said.
“It’s bad, it’s really bad,” she said, as she did a panoramic assessment of her yard, house and her neighborhood. “There were trees everywhere. I mean everywhere.”
Inside of her house where the tree fell, several wires were open and exposed. She’s grateful for her landlord doing repairs on the breaker box, but she feels left with unstable conditions.
Forecasters have put Valdosta in a corridor that might get more rain from Hurricane Milton, which is currently gaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico. There is a 20% of rain Wednesday night from Hurricane Milton, according to the National Weather Service forecast.
“What if the rain adds weight? to the roof” she said. “We’re really just gamblin’ being in here.”
Eager to go back to work, Legier will have her first shift back at Jack’s Chophouse as a cook later Friday evening. She said the school where she teaches preschool is “a mess with trees everywhere” and doesn’t know when they might return.
“This is a whole week without pay, and you know it’s the first of the month, rent’s due.”
In the meantime, she’s filed to receive Food Stamps.
“If I go to one of the food distribution sites and by the time I walk there all the food is gone,” she said. “We still need help.”
This story was originally published October 9, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
