{"id":2455,"date":"2025-01-22T19:39:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T00:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/?p=2455"},"modified":"2025-01-22T19:39:37","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T00:39:37","slug":"after-the-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/?p=2455","title":{"rendered":"After The Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For Families of AJA Teachers, Hurricane Helene Leaves Lasting Impact<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Hurricane Helene made landfall, history teacher Dr. Corrie Stephenson and her family prepared to hunker down in the basement for the night. Dr. Stephenson called her mother, who lives on a rural property in Douglas, Georgia and had opted to weather the storm there, thinking it would hit Atlanta harder. Little did they know that Helene would stray from its forecasted path, sparing Atlanta almost entirely and heading straight towards the Douglas area in Coffee County.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAround two in the morning, I got a text from [my mom] that said \u2018water is coming in,\u201d Dr. Stephenson recalled. \u201cI pulled the radar at that point and realized that the storm had stalled\u2026 and it had stalled over Coffee County.\u201d As it turned out, Helene\u2019s eye had passed right through it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dr. Stephenson’s mom’s Douglas, GA house post-Helene \/\/ Photo by Dr. Corrie Stephenson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Sometime before dawn on Friday, September 27, a tree crashed onto Dr. Stephenson\u2019s mom\u2019s house. It tore through the roof, Dr. Stephenson\u2019s former bedroom, a bathroom, and her mom\u2019s work office, warping the house frame and shifting its foundation. Almost half of the property\u2019s 30 old-growth trees fell down. \u201cIt took me days to get this whole story,\u201d Dr. Stephenson said, until her mom and grandma, who both live on the Coffee County property, could make it out of the debris-strewn streets to her home in Atlanta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process of repairing her mother\u2019s and grandmother\u2019s homes would take months, and they have yet to fully recover from damage caused by Helene. For AJA teachers like Dr. Stephenson, with relatives living in areas along the storm\u2019s path, Hurricane Helene\u2019s effects have lingered far longer than the temporary power outages and floods experienced in metro Atlanta. The storm devastated communities, whose people have turned to each other and outside resources for help. Power outages lasted for weeks, homes and schools were destroyed, and some businesses may never reopen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amid repairs on her mother\u2019s and grandmother\u2019s houses, Dr. Stephenson and her family stayed with her mom and grandma for Thanksgiving. She spent her time there split between family meals and collecting piles of fallen trees and limbs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was grateful to be with my family, grateful that no one got hurt, but it was a little sad to sit out there and see all the hard work my granddad did on that property\u201d Dr. Stephenson said. \u201cIt\u2019s just kind of gone now, and we\u2019ve got to do all that work again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Stephenson wasn\u2019t the only AJA teacher dealing with Hurricane Helene\u2019s lasting effects. For English teacher Mrs. Sarah Peykoff, the storm brought similar anxieties as it veered toward her family in Augusta, Georgia, where she grew up. \u201cWe honestly thought we were going to get it really bad up in Kennesaw (norwest of Atlanta), and so I was super worried about that,\u201d Mrs. Peykoff said. On Thursday night, however, she noticed that the hurricane radar indicated that it was approaching her family in Augusta instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Active power lines landed on the driveway of Mrs. Peykoff\u2019s childhood home. Trees covered the yard and made it difficult for her parents to leave. Mrs. Peykoff\u2019s parents went to stay with her for a few days in the aftermath, \u201creveling in the air conditioning and having good food.\u201d She and her family then went to her parents house to help clear debris and bring equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe pictures don’t prepare you,\u201d Mrs. Peykoff said. \u201cTrees were just down everywhere.\u201d She drove past familiar sights that are now damaged by the storm, such as her old high school, \u201cwhich you couldn’t even see\u2026 from the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Peykoff also went to her sister\u2019s house nearby to restore her knocked-down yard fence. Their families got to work on the fence, eventually beginning to \u201cstart talking and chatting, just hanging out on the weekend.\u201d Although \u201cit\u2019s a horrible thing that happens [and] everyone’s kind of frustrated,\u201d Mrs. Peykoff said the effort felt oddly enjoyable. At night, she layed out air mattresses in her parents\u2019 living room, reminding her of power-outages when \u201cwe would all huddle in the living room with a flashlight or candles playing board games\u201d as kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What shocks Mrs. Peykoff most is how long Helene\u2019s blow has endured. Months later, some of her high school friends are living with parents or in rental homes because they cannot yet afford to repair their houses. Nevertheless, she said that Augusta has maintained its \u201cclose community.\u201d In the early days after the storm, local restaurants cooked food that would otherwise spoil and served it on the main street, and the elementary school organized activities on the library lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hoping to boost the economy of communities devastated by Helene, science teacher Mrs. Catherine Brand traveled to Asheville, North Carolina during winter break. Her family was looking for a destination between their holiday religious obligations, and she wanted to contribute to Asheville\u2019s recovery while doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Boarded up restaurants in downtown Asheville, NC \/\/ Photo by Mrs. Catherine Brand<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Upon arriving, Mrs. Brand encountered \u201cjust massive destruction.\u201d Many of the restaurants and shops were boarded up, and piles of debris lay on both sides of the road. Mrs. Brand shopped in open venues and stayed in the Biltmore Estate, which she said employs most of Asheville\u2019s residents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Brand and her family spoke with the wait staff, housekeeping, and concierge operators who serviced them. She said these interactions involved \u201ca lot of reciprocal gratitude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere’s something about seeing it for real, seeing the trees, [and] piles that were ten to 14 feet high,\u201d she said. After around five weeks without power or work, the people that Mrs. Brand encountered were ready to move past this \u201crough\u201d experience and were \u201creally glad to be back at work.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Families of AJA Teachers, Hurricane Helene Leaves Lasting Impact<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":2457,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"Hurricane Helene's path \/\/ Map by AccuWeather","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","entry","rows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Screenshot-2025-01-16-5.28.17-PM.png?fit=420%2C403&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2455"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2460,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2455\/revisions\/2460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}