A cross made from logs still stands, a testament to faith and prayers for protection. Beyond that, miles of trees strewn about or snapped in two. Outbuildings lie smashed to pieces. Downed fences. Flooding everywhere. That’s the scene Georgia cattlewoman Stephanie Miller describes after Hurricane Helene hit the morning of Sept. 27.
“It literally looks like a scene out of a twister movie,” Miller recounts. She and her partner, Kye Lamm, share a rural home in Rockledge, about an hour southeast of Macon.
“We could feel the storm come in about 1:30 in the morning. By 2 a.m., we had completely lost power, and we just laid there. I was like, ‘Lord, please let everything hold on.’ About 4:45, we thought it was stopping because it literally sounded like a freight train. Living in Georgia, we know what tornadoes sound like. It felt like and sounded like a tornado for about three and a half hours. At 4:45, we opened the front door because it had got calm. Little did we know that’s when the eye was passing over.”
As the storm ramped up, a 60-year old pecan tree in their front yard came down right in from of them, narrowly missing the house.
“The storm passed through a lot of our area,” Miller says. “In our area in Georgia, we have a lot of cattle. Many of our farmers who row crop also have cattle. We’re right here in the middle of harvest season. We’ve been pretty much throat punched.”
Miller and Lamm own Sundown Cattle Company and background yearlings. They also help other producers with herd management, consulting and putting together lots to send to the Midwest and Texas. They have spent the days since the storm helping with clean up, gathering and recovery efforts.
“There’s so much loss, both human and livestock,” she shares. “We had to put down nine of our cattle as they were just mangled under the trees.”
With the lack of power and cell service, Miller says it’s been hard to communicate. She says friends, neighbors and other cattle producers have been trying to coordinate help for each other.
“We’re probably about 12 counties linked together, and a lot of us know what we’re all going through,” she says. “Everybody is swapping out services and cell numbers. When we do have cell phone service, we’ve just been lining up everything this week, asking if people need help.”
Miller says they have been calling on each other to help get cattle off the river, bringing in portable corrals, horses and dogs, doctoring cattle and cutting through downed trees with chainsaws to make a path.
There is very little water, and the water that comes in is used quickly. Everyone is without power. Gas for generators is scarce, Miller says.
“People where we’re at today are having to drive 40 to 50 miles to get gas because the gas stations here are mom and pops, and there’s lines. People line up for two or three hours just to get gas,” she explains the reality they are facing.
One of the biggest power providers, Altahama EMC’s entire territory was without power and is slowing starting to come back online.
“None of us have power. No power. No showers. Without power people aren’t able to run wells and water livestock,” she says.
With all of the rain, the ground is saturated and trees that didn’t fall during the storm are falling now and taking down more fences.
“We’re trying to cut our way to the pasture to get some portables in and get those cows off the river,” Miller says.
The reality of the storm’s devastation and long-term impacts have started to sink in.
“A lot of our row croppers have been on the urge of just throwing their hands in the air,” Miller says. “They have farmed this land for generations and now are having to make impossible decisions. When you’ve got miles and miles of fence down, and not the time or money to wait for equipment, they’re saying, ‘Sell them; I need them gone.’”
In addition, many farmers still haven’t harvested their crops.
“The peanuts, if you don’t get them out, they’re going to rot in the field,” she adds. “Some hard decisions have to be made.”
Miller says she’s not sure if the outside world really understands what Georgia and the Southeast are going through. In addition to the cattle business, Miller also hosts a morning radio show about faith, family and farming. While the power was restored to the station, there still is not power to the tower.
“We haven’t really had access to the internet or TV, so I’m not broadcasting right now. I can’t even use that to link people together because we don’t have that access right now,” she explains.
To put this storm into perspective, Millers says Lamm has done a lot of work in Florida and helped cowboy down there during Hurricane Charlie. He said we’re not built for hurricanes up here.
“We’re built for tornadoes, but not for hurricanes,” she says. “We’ve lost so much of our pecan trees. We’re talking 60-to-80-year-old pecan trees. They’re gone. They have a shallow root system. The planted pine trees looked like they could have been harvested at any point this year. Now they’re laid over. If they’re not laid over, they’re snapped in two. We’re a big logging community down here. Every other truck is a rock truck or a log truck. They can only salvage trees for pulp wood now.”
Millers says people have memories of surviving Hurricane Michael in 2018.
“It came through the same path,” she says. “Everybody tried to prepare, but there was no way to prepare for this — miles and miles and miles of destruction and flooding.”
With the port strikes, Miller fears the additional pressure on the supply chain. The meat processing plant in Augusta was also closed due to lack of power.
“When you start to think about the supply chain, it could really be broken,” she says.
Even with all the destruction and despair, Miller remains optimistic.
“We’re still surviving, and we’re working together to make sure everybody is taken care of,” she says. “That’s been the beautiful thing — to see people of all ethnicities, all political backgrounds, no matter what they believe in, they’re coming together and working together to get through this. Something that could easily divide us is actually bringing us together.”
Miller says she sees so much resiliency in the people of the Southeast.
“We feel like we’ve taken it from every direction with this hurricane,” she explains. “But you see people on the side of the road, they may be strangers, but they’re working together. I was riding my horse on the river, when we were trying to push a set out, and I was thinking all these people are literally the hands and feet of Jesus.”
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