ATLANTA – About 50,000 Georgia electric customers were still without power Wednesday in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, as yet another massive storm – Hurricane Milton – was bearing down on Florida.
Most Georgians remaining without power are in rural areas served by the state’s electric membership corporations (EMCs), Gov. Brian Kemp said late Wednesday afternoon after meeting with Chatham County emergency management officials in Savannah.
“They have a lot of devastation,” Kemp said. “[But] they’re steadily going after it.”
The governor also reported the death toll in Georgia from Helene has reached 34. The huge storm tore through South Georgia and northeast through the Augusta area Sept. 27 before moving into the Carolinas, where some of the worst damage and the most deaths occurred in western North Carolina.
Now, with Milton expected to hit Florida’s west coast Wednesday night as a Category 3 hurricane, many of the Floridians in a huge evacuation zone were heading north into Georgia. Kemp said hotel rooms are filling up, but rooms remained available in Albany, Columbus, Macon, and Atlanta. State parks are open to RVs and campers, he said.
With so many Floridians fleeing Milton, traffic in South Georgia has been heavy, Kemp said.
“Just about every car on I-75 north had a Florida license plate,” he said. “[But] we’ve seen that in the past and know how to deal with it.”
While Hurricane Milton is expected to move quickly through Florida’s midsection from the Gulf Coast before heading out into the Atlantic Ocean, Georgia isn’t likely to escape the storm completely. Twenty counties in the southeastern portion of the state are expected to receive two to six inches of rainfall and tropical storm winds of up to 50 miles per hour starting early Thursday.
The six counties likely to get the most rain – Camden, Glynn, McIntosh, Brantley, Charlton, and Ware – could see flash flooding, according to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., has launched a bipartisan push for federal disaster relief to farmers affected by Hurricane Helene, working with U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton.
“There is the risk of not just deep but lasting damage to Georgia agriculture … if Congress fails to act swiftly,” Ossoff said.
Ossoff said estimates are that up to 35% of Georgia’s cotton crop and 10% to 30% of the state’s peanuts have been lost. At least 200 poultry houses were damaged in the storm, while up to 4 million acres of timberland and up to 50,000 acres of pecan orchards were destroyed, he said.
Ossoff said he wants Congress to act on disaster relief as soon as the dollar value of the losses has been assessed, a process that remains ongoing.