As Kamala Harris descended on Wednesday into Augusta, she met a city contemplating how much of their lives have been unmade by Hurricane Helene.
“I am here to personally take a look at the devastation,” Harris said after receiving a briefing by emergency response leaders in Georgia. “It’s particularly devastating in terms of loss of life that this community has experienced, the loss of normalcy, and the loss of critical resources.”
The Augusta area hasn’t quite drawn the national attention given to western North Carolina, with its washed-out roads and severe flooding. Augusta is still marginally functional. Hurricane Helene shaved the land here with a dull razor. The damage resembles a tornado strike more than a hurricane, said Leroy Redfield, describing pockets of destruction that make what survived all the more remarkable.
“Driving in, in a mile you’ll see at least 20 broken power poles,” he said. “I mean broken in half.” Redfield has taken to watching in the morning to see where new poles go up; that’s where the power is going next.
Most people here have been without power since Friday morning. Some had been unable to leave their homes for days, as tall poplar, live oak and cedar trees littered the streets. Uprooted trees line every major road. Trees along Augusta’s downtown strip lie on their sides, torn out of the sidewalk straight through four inches of concrete.
And yet, just as Harris was offering her assessment of the damage a few blocks away, Sherman Gartrell was tossing lemon pepper wings in a food truck next to a toppled tree on Broad Street, feeding people for free as they came. A furniture store owner on Broad Street had paid for him to come down from Athens and help, Gartrell said.
Broad Street still had power, though most places could only take cash because internet service outages had rendered credit card processing useless. Water was out. Most things were out, frankly. And yet, somehow, the street still had some bustle because everything everywhere else seemed to still be some flavor of broke.
“We’ve found that people down south, they still do the right thing,” said Melanie Lumpkin of Augusta. Wednesday was the first she had been able to venture out of her neighborhood, she said. “People are giving, you know, sharing. We were at a store, and the guy needed $2 in cash, and every single person in line immediately reached for their wallet. People are sharing gas and food and bringing their neighbors cooked meats.”
Lumpkin has a tree visiting her attic, and two more that took out her carport and shed. Augusta’s aggressive humidity has already caused mildew and rot in the house. Water is spotty; power is nonexistent. She’s insured, but the first quote to get the trees off of her home came in at $60,000, Lumpkin said.
It’s too soon to assess whether the state and federal emergency response has been effective, her son Will Lumpkin said. “Augusta is really coming together, but at the same time, there’s still a long way to go. “I don’t think we were prepared. This isn’t going to be months. For this, it will be years.”
But Mary Katherine Gorlich said this could have been much worse. “This would have been very different with someone else in the White House,” Gorlich said. The army veteran said she loved Augusta but had been considering her options overseas in the wake of a possible Joe Biden loss before Harris’s ascent.