Hurricane track over southwest Georgia
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Hurricane track over southwest Georgia

We spoke by phone to people from McRae, Plains and Valdosta about how Hurricanes may be the new normal for South Georgia. Preparing for hurricanes in South Georgia

"I think people better be prepared for it being the normal," said Thor Ott of McRae. "This is the first time that I’m aware of, and I’ve lived here for 23 years, that a storm has continued hurricane strength into Middle Georgia. Last year when Irma came through, it lasted longer than this storm, but we didn’t have this degree of damage and wind."

“We’ve lived in Valdosta for 15 years or so now and the last three years we’ve had to do this and I really don’t recall ever having to do this before," said Kippy Tift. "And I don’t know what the cause is. I’ll leave that to the scientists but it seems like every year we’re gonna have to deal with this. So far it seems like it’s to our advantage that we don’t live on the coast. It hasn’t hit us extremely hard though last year there were  some very serious situations in Valdosta. So yeah, I’m thinking okay now we’re in one of those places, you know?”

“I think what we’re actually learning as citizens is to actually take this way more seriously," Nicole Kirksey of Plains said. "My husband and I were even talking about it, ‘you know what we need – we really do truly need to prepare for hurricanes now.’ And we just had that conversation about things we need to put in a box that you just don’t think about when you don’t live on the coast.”

Downtown Albany after Hurricane Michael
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Downtown Albany after Hurricane Michael

Tree down in Americus
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Tree down in Americus