Helene one year later: Hurricane left trail of devastation across Dublin, surrounding area 

One year ago today, Hurricane Helene rolled through Georgia and left behind major destruction and death.

It took weeks for people in Laurens County to regain power and months, if not longer, before damages were repaired. Hurricane Helene brings up a lot of emotions for Dublin Fire Chief Matthew Cutler. 

“It was definitely the worst weather event I’ve been through in my career,” he said. “There are good feelings of how the community came together and helped each other.” 

He recalled a couple of restaurants cooperating to help feed first responders and linemen. There were other locations where food and water were handed out around the county.

“Those are the good memories,” Cutler said. “The bad memories were the night of the storm and the days following when people were out of power.” 

Cutler’s television in his office lately has been on The Weather Channel, which for the past week has been revisiting Hurricane Helene. 

“It was definitely a nerve-wracking and intense night when the storm came through,” Cutler said. 

Cliff Wall, Georgia Power’s distribution supervisor for the Dublin area, said they were ready for the storm. They had food ready to cook if the power went out and locally they were prepared to spring into action once the storm left the area. 

What no one knew was which way the storm would head. The original prediction had the eye of the storm over Macon. When Hurricane Helene eventually made its way through Georgia, the eye wound up closer to Dublin.

“Macon was expected to get hit hard, but it didn’t,” Wall said. “Dublin and Vidalia got it harder than they were expected to be hit.” 

Chaos during the storm…

The back seat of a patrol car was somewhere Cutler had never been before. But during the early morning of Sept. 27, he did not have a choice. And it was not because he had broken the law or done something wrong.

Thankfully, he had vacated the driver’s seat of his work truck moments before it was destroyed. Before his truck’s date with a tree, Cutler and a couple of police officers received a call to respond to a man who was trapped underneath a tree in his house. Because of downed trees, they had tried many roads in an attempt to get to the man’s house. They were making a last ditch effort to make it to the house when the person called and said he had managed to get out from under the tree and was safe. Cutler and the officers wanted to return to the Shamrock station when they came to a tree they could not pass.

“I called the police officer behind me and told him that I had a chainsaw, but we were going to wait until the rain calmed down before we cut it,” Cutler said. “The other officer came in from the other way.”

Cutler stepped out of his truck and went to the front where he met the officers and to make a plan for the tree.

“All of a sudden there was a ‘Blam!’” Cutler said. 

A tree had fallen on the truck across the passenger seat, windshield, part of the roof and the hood. 

“We were in shock,” Cutler said. “We abandoned my truck and the other officer’s vehicle that was behind me and got into the back of a police vehicle for the first time in my adult life.”

Not only did he leave his truck but both of his cellphones, too.

“They had been charging and the phones were the last thing on my mind,” Cutler said. “I radioed in to let them know my truck had been hit and was disabled.” 

They were just about back to the station when they received a call about one of Cutler’s friends, who later died after a tree fell on his house.

“It seemed like it took us forever to get to him,” Cutler said. “He had passed away before we got there. There was nothing we could do.” 

He was one of two deaths that happened during the storm. They made it back to Shamrock Station and rested while waiting for the sun to rise.  

“We had been through some pretty intense stuff,” Cutler said. 

Things had been calmer in the days leading up to Sept. 27. First responders in the city and county met and came up with plans for Hurricane Helene. There was a lot of hope and praying that this would not be as bad as some were predicting.

“Sometimes we have made a lot of plans and preparations and we go through a lot of things and it’s not as bad as what we thought,” Cutler said. “It turned out to be worse than what we expected.”

Cutler went home a little bit earlier in the day on Thursday, Sept. 26 for some rest because he knew it was going to be a long night.  His family came to his house so that they could ride the storm out together. But Cutler did not plan to be there. Between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m., the chief returned to the city.

“I had a feeling that if I did not return to the city by a certain time, I wouldn’t be able to,” he said. 

Cutler moved from place to place, checking in with the Shamrock and the Southside stations to make sure they had everything they needed. He also communicated with the Emergency Operation Center and went to Dublin City Hall as the storm approached. 

One good thing about the timing of the storm was the fact that it hit early in the morning. Many people were sleeping – or trying to sleep – when the hurricane arrived.

“It was definitely a double-edged sword,” Cutler said. “Things were closed so people were not out and about. There were some who wanted to see what was going on.”

First responders received calls throughout the morning when power lines and poles fell. There was a fire at the apartments near Highland. Cutler said power lines caught the trees on fire.

“We tried not to go out during the worst part of the storm,” he said. “We lost power in a lot of areas, and I hated that people lost power, but no spark meant no flames.” 

Around 5 to 6 that morning, Cutler heard officers who live near his home were reporting that they could not find a route to town because of the storm damage. 

“There was no direct way to get anywhere,” Cutler said. “You had to know the backstreets. They were trying to get to town to help and everywhere they went was blocked. I knew that if they could not get here, I could not return home.” 

There was plenty to do though. Their plan was to reopen the streets.

“By lunch time we had it where people could get around,” Cutler said. “It wasn’t the best and wasn’t what they were used to. As we started working into the neighborhoods, we checked with people to make sure they were OK. We had a two-fold mission once the sun came up. We were trying to address the calls that were coming in. People believed if they kept making the same call about the same power line being down, (the power company) would come out faster.” 

Hours later, Cutler returned to his truck to retrieve his phones. Later that day, Cutler and other first responders went to the police department where lunch was provided. Dublin Police Chief Keith Moon had been receiving updates throughout the storm. At one point, they told Moon that the fire chief was in the back of a police car.

“He wanted to know why the fire chief was in the back of a police car,” Cutler said, laughing about the exchange. “When I got my phone, I had a lot of calls and missed calls. (That night) was not fun at all.” 

After the storm: Cleaning up, restoring power…

Wall woke up around 2 a.m. on Sept. 27 as Hurricane Helene made its way through Ailey where he lives. 

“I never went back to sleep,” he said. “I listened to the trees as they crashed in the distance. All around I could hear the howling of the wind and it was pitch-black dark. You could not see what was going on around you until daylight hit.” 

Once the sun rose, and the wind began to die down, Wall was able to get out and see what the storm had left behind.

“I was surprised by the damage,” Wall said. “What was left was devastation. It was pretty unbelievable.”

When he felt like it was safe to venture out, Wall pointed his vehicle toward Dublin. He never made it.

“My path was totally blocked, left and right,” Wall said. “I attempted to come to Dublin, but everywhere I went was blocked.” 

He met up with an EMC lineman who lives close to him. They had to cut their way through trees to make a path. Someone used a front-end loader to make a way for them to travel into Vidalia. 

“It took us between four and a half hours to five hours to get to headquarters, which normally takes 10 minutes travel time,” Wall said. “A couple of other linemen made their way in, and we all pretty much had the same experience, working our tail off to get a way in to work.”

They regrouped and came up with a plan. 

“We had a main drag (in Vidalia) and picked the biggest section of customers to get back on,” Wall said. “Dublin was the same way. We had folks in place, so that when it hit, we could start figuring the best way to get lights back on and get a sense of normalcy back to town.” 

Wall recalled that areas like Dudley and Montrose were not quite as bad. McRae, Alamo and Dublin had damage, but the main path of destruction was from East Dublin and east of there, including Wrightsville.

He remembers a couple of big trees falling on Jefferson Street in Dublin. 

“We probably lost over 50 percent of our customers, if not more,” Wall said. “I never really made it to Dublin because of how bad it was. I didn’t have power at my house for 10 days.” 

Altamaha EMC, which serves eastern portions of Laurens County and other hard hit areas such as Treutlen, Emanuel and Montgomery counties, reported catastrophic damage to its infrastructure, with all meters and substations down in the wake of the hurricane. 

Not long after the storm, Georgia Power had a staging area at Southern Pines where sister companies from Mississippi and Alabama converged to eat, have their clothes washed and sleep before heading back out to a site. Walls said they had contract crews from all over the nation here. Crews from Milledgeville and Macon made the trip as well throughout the weeks.

“It would have taken a whole lot longer to get everything back if it was not for them,” he said. “We just put a call out and they assist ed us. This is the most recent widespread assistance call that Georgia Power has had in several years. No matter where they went, (linemen) saw a lot of the same damage. We helped each other out by sharing resources. The EMCs had their own plans, but they saw about the same damage.

“I don’t know how many poles were replaced in Dublin,” Wall added. “It was hundreds and hundreds of poles that got replaced. We spent several months after that doing storm cleanup. We picked up debris and finding things that needed to be brought back up to spec and things like that.” 

Wall has lived in the area for 17 years and has traveled to Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, up the East Coast and down in Florida. But Hurricane Helene was one of the worst he had ever witnessed. What made it worse, though, was this storm hit home. 

“I never want one to ever happen near home again,” Wall said. “We love going off to help people, but we don’t want it to happen near our home. We always have a plan, and that’s the main thing. Having those resources to help out is big. You don’t want this to happen anywhere. Definitely not in your backyard. When this does happen, it is refreshing to see people come together and help each other.”