Driving from Claxton to Statesboro Friday morning in the wake of Hurricane Helene, the reporter saw U.S. Highway 301 carpeted with pine needles and other leaves. Trees were broken in the ditches – one protruded into the highway – and power lines sagged to the ground on broken poles.

He passed the Claxton-Evans County Airport, where shortly before 2:15 a.m. the automated weather station had logged a 63-mph gust during a 20-minute sustained wind ranging upward from 36 mph. Not far beyond the airport, the aluminum roof and timbers from someone’s shed or carport had ended up in the highway.

In the more than 20-mile drive up 301, the first traffic lights actually functioning as of mid-morning were the set at the Rucker Lane and Old Register Road turnoff at the Georgia Southern campus. At other intersections, even on Veterans Memorial Parkway, lights had gone missing from their wires. Further up the Blue Mile, the traffic signal at the four Main Streets intersection was reduced to a flashing red light, but the signal and some downtown businesses had power. Still, the power was off at the Statesboro Herald office, as for more than 1 million other electric utility customers across the Georgia.

Emergency Management Director Corey Kemp acknowledged that Helene was more than he – like many other area officials and residents – had expected.

“I guess personally it was a lot worse than I thought it would be,” he said. “We were prepared, but not to that magnitude.”

Although many homes and other buildings were damaged, Kemp said, he knew of no serious injuries, but couldn’t be sure.

“We’re still out trying to get to people that we couldn’t get to, so we’re still trying to gauge that as well,” he said.

In contrast to the torrential rains of Tropical Storm Debby nearly two months earlier, Hurricane Helene was mostly a wind event in the area. The roaring continued most of the night, and Kemp said he knew the highest winds were “around 50 or 60” mph, but didn’t know the maximum because all of the anemometers he knew of appeared to stop working during the early morning.

As accessed through the National Weather Service website, the automated station at the Statesboro-Bulloch County Airport logged sustained winds of 21-24 mph but gusts of 44, 45 and 41 mph from 2:15 a.m. until 3:20 a.m., but did not register any further reports after that. Kemp said a Georgia Southern weather instrument may have logged an over 70 mph gust before it also went offline.

When the NWS issued a localized tropical storm warning advisory for Statesboro, Portal and the Denmark community late Thursday afternoon, it had included a “peak wind forecast” of 25-35 mph with gusts to 65 mph. So, the recorded windspeeds were not far from the prediction.

But after making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast, Helene never made a predicted turn to the northwest. Instead of rushing north near the Georgia-Alabama line as shown in earlier forecasts, the storm’s center passed through Middle Georgia near Macon and continued to the northeast.

In remarks Friday about the devastation Helene wrought on the state, a different Kemp, Gov. Brian Kemp, reported that 11 people had died in Georgia as a result of the storm. None of the reported fatalities were in Bulloch, as far as county officials knew.

Fire Dept. rescues

But the Bulloch County Fire Department had rescued three people from two heavily damaged homes in the early hours of Friday.

A battalion chief had forced entry into a home on R.L. Lee Road to remove a man who was trapped inside, after which the BCFD called the Red Cross to assist him, said county Fire Chief Ben Tapley. Two senior women removed from a badly damaged home on Doe Lane earlier in the night were brought back to Station 7 until winds subsided and then reunited with family members, Tapley said.

In another storm-related incident, Bulloch County firefighters responded to a fire reportedly caused by an emergency generator at a residence on Seed Tick Road about 3:18 p.m. Thursday.

Road closures

Just as wind damage was the cause of rescues after Helene, in contrast to the water rescues after Debby, this time fallen trees and power lines were the cause of road closures. At one point Friday morning, 65 roads were closed across Bulloch County, and 28 had been reopened as of about 2:30 p.m., said Stephanie Ferrari, administrative coordinator with the county Public Works Department.

The department had four teams working in different parts of the county. Those daytime crews totaled 30 or more county employees and inmates, after more than a dozen had worked during the night.

“Some are riding ahead to verify where trees are down and calling if it needs heavy equipment or if we can just cut it out of the road,” Ferrari said.

Later in the afternoon, paved roads had been cleared, as much as possible, where trees had fallen without being entangle with power lines, said Public Works Director Dink Butler.  Where power lines are involved, Georgia Power or Excelsior EMC or their contractors have to remove the lines before county crews can remove the trees. Friday’s efforts cleared major paved roads first, then connector roads.

“We haven’t even begun to address the dirt roads,” Butler said. “We will probably begin that Saturday.” County officials were discussing how to use barricades to mark at least some of the obstacles.

Much of the debris will be pushed aside for now and hauled to a burn site later, county officials said.

Communication problem

With communications down Friday, Statesboro city personnel weren’t reached for a similar report.

“Communication has been a real problem,” said Corey Kemp. “Obviously, you know, cell phones are not working, so most of our communications are coming through our handheld radios. Phone lines are hit and miss.”

Fuel supplies were also a challenge for citizens and even the public agencies Friday, with many gas stations closed because of power outages. In Statesboro, lines of cars backed up onto the highways at some of the few stations that were open, as also occurred at some restaurants.

Georgia Southern University did not issue an “all clear” for a return to normal operations at noon as university officials had hoped, but remained closed all day Friday with classes and all-in person events cancelled, as announced in a 10 a.m. media statement.

Statesboro Mayor Jonathan McCollar issued a declaration of a state of emergency at 11 a.m. Friday.

“At this time, the mayor asks residents to stay off the roads if possible as city staff work to assess damage and get services restored,” stated an accompanying email. City Hall and other city buildings were closed to the public Friday.

Power outages

Georgia Power and the state’s Electric Membership Corporations (EMCs) reported more than 1.1 million were without power as of late Friday morning, according the Associated Press. In Bulloch County, a large majority of homes and businesses remained without electricity through Friday.

Statewide, Georgia Power reported it had approximately 730,000 customers impacted by the storm as of 10 a.m.

“Crews are working now to assess damage in every region across the state and will be restoring power to customers as quickly as possible,” the company’s 11 a.m. release stated. “Since the beginning of the storm, power has been restored to more than 120,000 customers by crews, and ‘smart grid’ technology enabling remote restoration while storm conditions were still at their worst.”

As of 6:25 p.m. Friday, Georgia Power’s online outage map showed 84 outages affecting 19,153 Bulloch County customers, out of the company’s 22,553 total customer locations in Bulloch.

Meanwhile, Excelsior EMC, headquartered in Metter and Statesboro, on its outage map showed well over 10,000 customers with power out in its service area, which besides Bulloch and Candler reaches into Bryan, Effingham, Evans, Emanuel, Jenkins, and Tattnall counties.