As Augusta gets back to normal, restoring the power, bringing back internet connectivity and turning on the water, one comment heard from residents is that they never have seen storm damage as bad as this. The 2014 ice storm that hit Augusta last was ruled less serious than the present challenges left by Hurricane Helene. It’s no wonder that post storm we feel a little overwhelmed and fearful of the future.
Can we survive the storm? If Augusta’s history is any indication, we can! Look at the similarities our present situation has with the ancestors of our past.
Augusta has had its fair share of disasters, mostly in the form of torrential floods. Some of the more famous include 1888, 1908, 1929, and 1990. We’ll mostly look at 1929, if only because the dates almost match!
Just as the major wind event predicted for September 26-27 became so much more, folks in 1929 put their hopes in the predictions of the Augusta Bureau Weather Chief, Mr. Eugene Emigh. “There is small possibility of the hurricane moving this far inland…he was reported as saying to the Augusta Chronicle on September 27, 1929. He also had no fears for the integrity of the levee which held back the waters of the Savannah from Augusta.
But heavy rains in Northwest Georgia, a by-product of the hurricane, put the lie to these predictions. Rather than miles of downed trees and power poles, one hundred city blocks of 1929 Augusta were submerged underwater by a river which had crested at 46.3 feet
Like us, 1929 Augusta was without electrical service to homes and businesses. Telephone services were spotty to non-existent. While the crew of telephone operators fielded hundreds of local calls, downed wires cut Augusta off from much of the rest of Georgia and South Carolina though it appears the situation was quickly rectified. Present-day residents are at the mercy of cell towers rather than wires but the feelings of isolation were probably similar.
High water made for impassible roads, another parallel to our current situation as we look back to the walls of trees that blocked and in some cases still block almost every road in the area. But as soon as things cleared up a little in 1929, high school football resumed games. The Richmond Academy Musketeers faced their rivals from Lincolnton High School not long after the deluge on September 30, 1929. This brings to mind the first post-hurricane football game in the CSRA, a match-up between Evans High School and Effingham County which played on October 9, 2024.
Hopefully in our search for gasoline, we had nothing similar to 1929 though. The People’s Oil Company had overturned tanks which poured gasoline into the Savannah River rather than the waiting gas tanks of the citizens. While it took a while to restore our water, the boil water advisory erred on the side of caution, not from a need to combat similar pollution.
And while I’m sure the 1929 first responders coped mightily, we didn’t consider using two hundred Boy Scouts for rescue work.
Travel by train, bus and automobile came to a brief standstill in 1929. In 2024 our hurricane force winds destroyed weather measuring equipment and kept planes grounded. But at least our pilots did not suffer the fate of a 1929 bus driver who carried his passengers across a stretch of water on his back.
Another similarity is the need for relief supplies. Generous friends have provided Augusta with pallets of water, first aid kits, non-perishable food, cleaning supplies, diapers, toiletries, and even pet food. This mirrors an effort after the 1908 flood – another severe disaster – to send bread, flour, meal, grits, canned goods, beef, salmon, tomatoes, condensed milk, cheese, coffee, butter, crackers, potatoes, apples, onions, vinegar, syrup, bacon, ham, sausage, blankets, quilts, hats, clothing, brooms, buckets, etc … I’m sure there is a lot on the list that we have wanted in the last few days. At least we didn’t have to wait for our supplies to be delivered by the wagon load.
What is the lesson to draw in comparing ourselves to our ancestors? Since we’ve shared similar experiences, we can also share in the recovery they experienced. They made it through. We can make it through. And one day, we’ll provide stories to our descendants about the hurricane of 2024 and how we have so much in common.