- Six months after Hurricane Idalia brought flooding rains and damaging winds to the Valdosta area, neighbors are still working to recover.
- The American Red Cross tells us they are partnering with other agencies to help neighbors in need.
- Watch the video above to see the progress that's been made.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Hurricane Idalia tore through South Georgia six months ago, and neighbors are still trying to pick up the pieces.
I'm Malia Thomas, your neighborhood reporter in Valdosta, and I'm going back to the neighbors I spoke with at the beginning of Idalia and seeing how they've been holding up.
Nancy Griffin had trees fall in her yard and went without power for days. I also followed up with Nancy a month after Idalia, with debris still in her yard then.
Now, she tells me that her area has been cleaned up after months of debris being scattered. "I still got a beautiful yard. There's not a lot of people that have a beautiful yard."
Despite Nancy feeling like life has returned to normal, she grieves the loss of good friend and elderly neighbor Faye. Faye suffered a fall during the hurricane, and died in December after another injury. Much of the damage Idalia did to Faye's home remains.
"She had to deal with this, because they wouldn't let her come home because we had no electricity she was in front of the hospital for a month came back out and then the next month fell again and stayed for 12 days."
Nancy also tells me that while people focus on the property and financial damage, the emotional impact is the most devastating. "My heart hurts. We've been knowing each other for a long time, and she was living by herself, and it just hurts. You still look over there because she enjoyed my Christmas, and she enjoyed the Ferris wheel we had, and she wasn't there to tell me how pretty it was this year."
I also checked back in with Tara Parker, a neighbor who was in the front lines helping others during the initial aftermath of Idalia. She tells part of the reason Idalia's impact still lingers after all this time because of the community's attitudes about the storm in the days before it struck.
"We probably went a really long time before we had to take it very seriously, and Idalia was a very serious storm, and it's not that we weren't prepared. I think you just become numb; not that the boy cried wolf, but that we weren't probably taking it as seriously as we should have."
Idalia recovery efforts are still ongoing in Valdosta, such as their tree restoration project for Sunset Hill cemetery.
