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Georgia Gov. Deal Gets Bird's-Eye View of Hurricane Havoc

While wind damage was the culprit of much of the damage across the state, Hurricane Irma’s storm surge and accompanying rain caused serious flooding throughout coastal counties at a severity worse than Hurricane Matthew less than a year before.

(TNS) - Gov. Nathan Deal took a helicopter tour of the hardest-hit areas of the Southeast Georgia coast Thursday, and while he said he knows the damage is extensive, he also knows it looks much worse on the ground.

“It’s hard to tell the effects of flooding from a helicopter, but you could tell where the debris had been, that it was a significant amount of flooding,” Deal said.

While wind damage was the culprit of much of the damage across the state, Hurricane Irma’s storm surge and accompanying rain caused serious flooding throughout coastal counties at a severity worse than Hurricane Matthew less than a year before.

“Normally, it is a situation where when we ask for federal assistance with regard to debris removal, it is usually a 75 percent federal, 25 percent local match, or state match,” Deal said. “In the past, that 25 percent has been divided equally between the local communities and the state of Georgia.

“I’m here to tell you that for the six coastal counties — in terms of debris removal, which we will be using the (Army) Corps of Engineers for that purpose. They will have contractors in place and they will become the primary source of debris removal. But, we will pay as the state, we will pay the entire 25 percent.”

He said local governments could better use their money on specific local needs, rather than matching money for federal relief. Also, Deal transferred $3 million from a state emergency fund to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency to cover costs already incurred from 600 National Guard troops and 50 Georgia State Patrol officers lending Florida assistance.

In turn, state officials expect the federal government to reimburse that $3 million. Last week, Congress passed an aid package of more than $15 billion to assist recovery from Irma and Hurricane Harvey, but with damage possibly in the hundreds of billions of dollars between the two storms, disaster funding will continue to be an issue.

No real estimate is yet available on Irma damage locally, but GEMA Director Homer Bryson said that should change before too long.

“We really have not compiled any statistics on this storm as of yet, because we’ve been really in the operational mode, and beginning (Wednesday) we began the transition into the assessment mode,” Bryson said. “We were in contact with FEMA and the Corps (Wednesday), and (today) we’ll have six FEMA, GEMA and local teams down here doing assessments, and that information will start flowing and once that information starts flowing, we’ll make it available.”

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©2017 The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.)

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