Georgia Today: Floyd County Courthouse; Georgia Tech space sustainability; Hurricane Helene recovery

 

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast. Here, we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Floyd County moves to stabilize its fire-damaged courthouse. Georgia Tech students consider sustainability in space, and there's good reason to think recovering from Hurricane Helene will take much longer than just a few years. 

Rachel Young Even further down, like 15 years after a storm, these places that are getting hit have a higher likelihood of mortality. 

Peter Biello: Today is Tuesday, April 7. I'm Peter Biello, and this is Georgia Today. 

 

Story 1: 

Peter Biello: Voters in Northwest Georgia are deciding today who will replace former Rome congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene for the remainder of her term. GPB's Sarah Kallis reports. 

Sarah Kallis: Republican Clay Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris are both hoping to represent Northwest Georgia for the remainder of Greene's term. Greene stepped down in January. Fuller has President Donald Trump's endorsement in the heavily Republican 14th District. National Democrats like former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg have campaigned for Harris ahead of the runoff. David Hale is a Palding County voter. 

David Hale: It's very important. I hope we get a good guy in Washington; we need it. 

Sarah Kallis: Whoever wins the special election will have to run again next month in the regular primary for a term beginning in January 2027. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kallis in Paulding County. 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Some of those same Northwest Georgia voters also will settle a race to replace former Trenton Republican state Sen. Colton Moore, who stepped down in January in an unsuccessful bid to replace Greene. Voters will also cast ballots in the Augusta-based district, where Democratic state Rep. Lynn Hefner stepped down on January, citing damage to her home from Hurricane Helene, and the state law requiring lawmakers to live in the districts they represent. And in metro Atlanta, two Democrats are on the ballot seeking to replace Former Stone Mountain Democratic state Rep. Karen Bennett, who resigned in January before pleading guilty to unemployment fraud. 

 

Story 3:

Peter Biello: After last week's Artemis II launch, Americans once again are thinking about exploring and settling in space. GPB's Chase McGee has more on a class at Georgia Tech that looks towards the future. 

Chase McGee: Thomas Gonzalez Roberts is an assistant professor of aerospace engineering and international affairs at Georgia Tech. He teaches space sustainability, which he says is the first class of its kind in the nation. In its first year, the course focused on managing limited resources, like radio frequencies or operational space in low Earth orbit. Now students are studying what might happen when settlers from different nations put roots on the moon's surface. 

Thomas Gonzalez Roberts There has been precedent in the expansion of sovereign claims on the surface of the Earth for just as long as those activities have happened, but there simply is no precedent for doing so on a foreign celestial body. 

Chase McGee: Gonzalez-Roberts says it's important to have these policy conversations now, as nations gear up for the next space race. For GPB News, I'm Chase McGee. 

 

Story 4:

Peter Biello: A bill that would allow people to go straight to pharmacists for birth control is headed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's desk for a signature. GPB's Sofi Gratas has more on how the legislation will roll out. 

Sofi Gratas: The bill authorizes pharmacists to dispense and administer birth control pills and injections without a prescription from a doctor. But this won't be until 2027. That's the deadline for the Department of Public Health and the state Board of Pharmacy to agree on rules, like how pharmacists will be trained to dispense the medication and what information they'll give out with it. Lead bill sponsor, Republican Rep.Beth Camp, says the language in the bill is meant to be inclusive. 

Beth Camp We don't know what kind of contraception could be in existence in years to come, but this is everything right now from a Depo-provera shot to a NuvaRing to oral contraception. 

Sofi Gratas: Birth control is already available at local public health departments after an initial assessment and is priced based on income. For GPB News, I'm Sofi Gratas.

 

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Floyd County officials are moving forward with plans to stabilize the county's historic courthouse, which was gutted by fire last month. At a special called meeting yesterday, county commissioners approved a nearly half-million-dollar contract aimed at ensuring safety around the site and opening roads around it. The 1892 red brick structure, a fixture in downtown Rome, caught on fire on March 21 and was declared a total loss. County officials say they'll evaluate the structure again once stabilization is complete in about three to four weeks. 

 

Story 6:

Peter Biello: It's been close to two years since Hurricane Helene cut a path across 62 Georgia counties. Since then, people have been rebuilding their homes, their routines, and their sense of security. GPB's Grant Blankenship recently dropped in on some of those efforts and learned there are still many years of recovery left to go. 

Grant Blankenship: It's a cool spring morning, and the crew's already been at work for hours at a home site in rural Columbia County, west of Augusta. They only recently picked up where a crew like them, other carpenters from an Amish community from up in Ohio, left off just a few days ago. Hurricane Helene is why the modular home that was here is long gone. This house will be brand new and hurricane-resilient, thanks to the long metal straps detaching the roof to the wall studs. 

Matthew Miller: Four foot, six foot, then the bottom. 

Grant Blankenship: It's based about every foot or so. Carpenter Matthew Miller leads this crew. He says this is not how he builds in Ohio. 

Matthew Miller: Just around here. Yeah, just for the hurricanes. 

Grant Blankenship: Just for the hurricanes. About a year ago, Scott Parrish started doing the legwork to get volunteer crews like this one from the group Mennonite Disaster Services to his part of Georgia. Parrish works in disaster response all over the country for the Methodist Church. And he has a farm nearby in the town of Thomson. He says in 35 years of disaster work though, Helene was the first one to find him at home. 

Scott Parrish: Quickly, I realized Asheville and western North Carolina had terrible flooding and they were all over the news coverage. They had a huge influx of funding and volunteers. Whereas Georgia was quickly — our story was lost because of the scale and scope of Hurricane Helene hitting four states. 

Grant Blankenship: Blame it on the news cycle, he says. But at the time he told colleagues in Florida, this is really frustrating. 

Scott Parrish: When I whined about Augusta's being overlooked, we need some help. They said, "Oh, this Amish group's worked with us. We're not standing up recovery. We're gonna send them to you."

Grant Blankenship: That was Mennonite Disaster Services. And when they wrap up here, they will have done about 80 home projects around Augusta — almost half of them total rebuilds in something like six months. Parrish is still getting requests for help. He says many people who come to him had home insurance, just not enough for a hurricane. Underinsurance is the homeowner's problem at the next house he shows. 

Scott Parrish: It gets weird with some of this — Oh, they got the back roof all the way off! Sweet! 

Grant Blankenship: This one is in Augusta proper and it's not a total tear down and rebuild. A tree tossed by Helene in the roof left the house needing a new one, sending the homeowner to live with relatives across the Savannah River. There's another crew of young men who are building the roof. And on the ground, young women in traditional dress are scraping the house to prepare it for new paint, where a Yoder oversees that work. 

Cora Yoder: I've been here 11 times, Gid's has been here 13 times. 

Grant Blankenship: Gid is Yoder's husband. 

Cora Yoder: My husband was a carpenter for 40 years, so this was always his dream. 

Grant Blankenship: Cora explains Gibb's job is making sure the pace of the crew's work doesn't outrun the permits they need to keep it all legal. He gets up at 4 a.m. every day. She gets another hour of sleep, until 5. They've done this work in disaster areas all across the South. 

Cora Yoder: We were to Lake Charles for two years, like, in a row. 

Grant Blankenship: The Yoders and others like them making these trips from the Midwest are the adult guides for crews of young workers who may have never left their home communities before. 

Cora Yoder: When people go home they have a new perspective of what they were taught because it's so different. 

Grant Blankenship: Scott Parrish, himself a Methodist minister, says he's come to learn this work is core to the faith of the Mennonite and Amish volunteers. 

Scott Parrish: "Love God, love neighbor." And so if you've got a skill that can help a neighbor who's hurt and can't rebuild their home and their life, why not go?

Grant Blankenship: Paris says after the Amish leave, a Jewish volunteer group will be on the ground. An Islamic group will follow, as will other volunteers from other faiths. He says this work will continue here for two or three more years. Rachel Young says in terms of hurricane recovery, even that is still just the start. 

Rachel Young: We're talking about even further down, like 15 years after a storm, these places that are getting hit have a higher likelihood of mortality, particularly amongst infants and Black populations. 

Grant Blankenship: Young is a professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In 2024, she was a post-doc at Stanford University, where she was lead author on a paper looking at the long-term health effects of hurricanes in the United States. 

Rachel Young: Using many, many years of cyclone impact data and many, many years of state-level all-cause mortality data. 

Grant Blankenship: 501 storms over 85 years. And what she saw were these lingering waves of extra death in storm-struck places long after the storm itself was gone. So why? 

Rachel Young: Yeah, so we — there is some literature that shows that people experience heightened levels of stress after a major disaster. 

Grant Blankenship: Young says a lot of the time that post-storm stress is economic, but extreme stress of any origin can hurt health in a bunch of different ways, from heart disease to diabetes, suicide, even increased infant death. 

Rachel Young: The conditions that the mother is in when they're giving birth is leading to those infants that are born five, 10 years later to be more vulnerable to dying prematurely. 

Grant Blankenship: So while Helene officially killed 37 people in Georgia, Young's research suggests the eventual death toll could be more like 15,000. 

Rachel Young: I think our findings really suggest that we're significantly under-investing in both resilience before a storm and then recovery after a storm. 

Cora Yoder: When you're given a key, you're actually being given two things ...

Grant Blankenship: Weeks after visiting Augusta, I'm in South Georgia, city of Douglas, in Coffey County. Today, nine families displaced by Helena receiving keys to their new homes. At the heart of this building effort, Mennonite Disaster Services, the same group, 140 miles away along Hurricane Helena's track near Augusta. Raman Ulrich of MDS says, here as there, these homes are built to the MDS Hurricane Resiliency Standard. 

Raman Ulrich: They're tied down from the top all the way down to the bottom, meant to withstand 150- to 160-mile an hour winds. 

Grant Blankenship: It's more than twice the wind speeds that destroyed these families' old homes. 

Raman Ulrich: It's a security for them, knowing that they're in a home that's going to stay there. 

Grant Blankenship: Ulrich has done this work for decades. He says he's seen the stress of disaster recovery take its toll. 

Raman Ulrich: The sad thing is that depression sets in after about 18 months, the despair that goes along with where we're at, so yeah, this is remarkable here that they rebuilt in 18 months. 

Grant Blankenship: And so it could be for the long-term health of these families seeing their new homes. 

Douglas resident: Take it easy for the girls right now 

Grant Blankenship: These keys landed in their hands in the nick of time. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship. 

 

Story 7:

Peter Biello: The King Center has named a new chair of its board of directors. The Atlanta-based nonprofit said today, Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO Stacey Stewart would lead its board. She succeeds an interim chair who took over the role following the 2024 death of longtime board chair Dexter Scott King, the younger son of civil rights leaders Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King. 

Story 8:

Peter Biello: Delta Air Lines is joining a growing list of U.S. carriers raising checked bag fees. The Atlanta-based company announced the move today as higher fuel costs ripple through the airline industry. Most Delta passengers on domestic and short-haul international routes will now pay $45 for the first checked bag and $55 for the second starting tomorrow. That's $10 more than before the Iran War started and disrupted global oil supplies. Delta says a third bag will now cost $200, a $50 increase. United Airlines and JetBlue also raised fees last week. Jet fuel is refined from crude oil and typically ranks as the second largest expense for airlines after labor. 

 

Story 9:

Peter Biello: In sports, the Braves face the Angels again tonight after taking the loss last night. Chris Sale gave up six earned runs over four innings, including a first pitch home run off the bat of Zach Meadow. Jose Soriano pitched eight dominant innings allowing a solo homer from Drake Baldwin and a single to Matt Olson in the first before sitting down 19 straight batters. Reynaldo Lopez gets the start for the Bravers tonight. 

Peter Biello: And that's it for this edition of Georgia Today. Make sure you tune into this podcast tomorrow as we break down the results of the 14th district election. If you'd like to learn more about any of these stories, go to gpb.org slash news and remember to subscribe to this podcast. Now, if you've got feedback for us or maybe a story idea, we are all ears. Send us a note by email. That's the best way to reach us. The address is georgiatoday@gpb.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We will see you tomorrow. 

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news