Liberty Begins At Home

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Looking for a way to help people in Augusta recover? Contribute here today to bring meals to those without power.

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Maybe it was the nervousness of it all. Or maybe yesterday wasn’t enough of a test.

A couple of our kids are young enough to still be potty training at night. One of them just wet the bed. And our washing machine doesn’t have power.

We had filled the bathtub with emergency water to flush the toilet in case we lose water service. Now my wife has to use it to wash the sheets. Urine does not age well sitting in a hamper.

She refills the tub afterwards as she hangs the sheets on the playground to dry. We continue hoping we don’t lose water, too.

Georgia power texts us an estimate for when the power will come back. October 5^th. That’s another week from today. We need to make some changes before our food goes bad.

We do not have reliable cell phone signal in the house. This leaves no way to check emails or access the internet. Barrages of text messages can come in at once, but then we don’t have service to reply to any of them.

Feeds on Nextdoor and Facebook are blowing up with messages about people’s cars having next to nothing in their tanks while trying to find a working gas station. We can only see the headers of these messages because the apps won’t load on our phones, but there is a rising sense of panic.

Decades of innovation for communication platforms has pushed everything online. And that is the only avenue aid providers seem to know how to use right now. So without internet, we have no way to know where to go for help.

Looking for Aid

My aunt’s family in Nebraska, however, does have internet. They work to find places for gas, food, and ice. We get a few resources from them in the hope we can get enough ice to keep food cold in the refrigerator.

I stop myself at the truck. I need to leave the house to do something, but I still don’t know where to go.

I call the Red Cross Hotline where the automated menu puts me in a holding queue for Helene victims. I look at the signal strength on my phone, then look at the clock. There’s barely enough signal to run Google Maps. How can I stay connected to this call while I’m on the road?

I decide to get off the phone and go to one of the aid stations my aunt sent. It’s as good a shot as any. I plug in the address and get on the road.

The sky is clear today. It makes driving over downed power lines less unsettling. The first stoplight I come to at a major intersection reminds me that few people know how to negotiate right-of-way in a 4-way stop when the power goes out. It’s even more complicated when each direction has two turn lanes.

The local radio station plays the same music as always. The DJs are telling their same stories. It feels like they’re on another planet where Helene didn’t happen, as comforting as it is to hear familiar songs.

There are more fallen trees on either side of the road. Fortunately, this is a main road and tree crews quickly cleared most of them back to the shoulder. I don’t have to weave into oncoming traffic like I did yesterday.

Then I come upon a traffic accident. Both lanes are blocked and people are turning around. I have a nearly full tank of gas, but I’m still nervous about idling while waiting for it to clear. Emergency resources are stretched thin already.

I quickly look at the map to find a way around it. Great! I can take a couple of backroads to get close to where I wanted to go. I turn around at the next road where a fallen tree left just enough room for me and put my plan into action.

The Detour

There’s something freeing about a detour. You can keep your car moving, so it feels like you’re making progress. There are also those times when the detour stops up more than the route you were on, and you curse yourself for not staying the course.

This detour was a terrible idea.

Main roads got most of the attention over the past day, which makes them safer to travel despite long lines. On this backroad I encounter several choke points where power lines and trees have narrowed down access to one lane or less.

I come upon a police cruiser that had been warning of a fallen tree in the road when another fell on top of it. Both windshields were shattered and I pray for the officer’s safety.

Downed power lines almost scrape my roof as I thread the needle between trees. I try to navigate around a teenage boy out for a joyride in his Polaris, muttering how this isn’t the time.

But, hey. It’s Georgia.

I realize I’ve added at least a half hour to my ride as I finally pull up to the address. Though something looks off about the situation.

Fog of War

I park on the gravel lot of the community center to approach a pavilion full of residents calmly scrolling on their phones and having casual conversations.

My heart sinks as they tell me there’s no aid station here. Everyone is there for the county wifi access point that’s still running. They try to help with a few ideas on where to find ice, but that means going back through the way I came.

I refuse to let the driving be for nothing and continue on this road. It leads to the interstate and there are two truck stops near the exit. The first is completely closed and the second is a madhouse.

I muscle past the gas pumps to find a parking spot, then I make my way inside. No lights on, but they do have ice. I spend half of my remaining $25 in cash on 4 bags, put them in the cooler, and head back east.

Traffic on the interstate is better than yesterday. But my normal exit is backed up from too many dark stoplights. Gas stations at Kroger and Walmart are also starting to queue hours-long lines along main roads, strangling traffic.

I navigate through another back road until a downed tree forces me to detour through a Dollar General parking lot. A moving truck gets stuck trying to make its way back into the road from a turn lane going the wrong direction. Oncoming traffic finally stops long enough for him to back up and get right. Southern gentility is starting to go out the window.

I take a left to see how bad the other road to our neighborhood is. My next-door neighbor couldn’t get out to work on this road yesterday, and I can see why.

I thread the needle between downed trees and overhead power lines again. How I don’t have paint scratched off my roof is beyond me.

Decisions, Decisions

I get home with the ice after an hour of detours on a drive that should take 20 minutes. My children lament the injustices of having to work on their homeschool assignments while their peers across the county are off.

We start making strategic decisions about how many bags go where. We did have a few gallon ziploc bags of ice from previous storms that help us put it directly on some food items.

We also start making calls of what really needs to be refrigerated. Salsa, mustard, ketchup all have enough salt in them to be stable for a while. Same with vegetables like zucchini, cucumbers, and peppers. This helps us focus our ice on eggs, milk, meat, and cheese.

A Boston butt roast in a foil pan makes for a great dinner. We wrap some tortillas in foil to heat up. My wife cautions these go moldy in a week if they’re not refrigerated. I reassure her they won’t be around that long. Thankfully, the kids are hungry enough to not leave many leftovers. And I don’t look like such a goon.

We also see some encouraging signs around the neighborhood. All these kids used to stay inside on their tablets after they got home from school. Now they’re congregating with each other and acting like real kids again. My 10-year old tells me it looks like a new neighborhood.

It is fortunate that we’ve passed the heat of the summer. I can’t imagine having a power outage with the 107 degree heat indexes we endured in July. Leaving the windows open at night helps the airflow, but it’s stickier to try to fall asleep to.

As we learn, it’s also still not cool enough for our ice to last very long, either.

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Interested in helping other victims of Hurricane Helene in Augusta? Many areas are still without power or easy access to food.

I’m sponsoring a fundraiser for Golden Harvest Food Bank. Contribute today to get these good people back on their feet.

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Did you miss the first installment? Get caught up here on the immediate aftermath on Day 1.

There’s more adventure to come. See what happens on Day 3.