In Coffee County, GA, 100-year-old trees lie like tiddlywinks across driveways. Roofs in Toombs County still gape at the sky. In inland Georgia, Hurricane Helene may be long gone, but the path of its wreckage remains.
Nearly six months after Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated the American Southeast, countless individuals and communities in Georgia and the Carolinas live surrounded by chaos, even as they muscle through recovery and try to navigate some sort of return to normal.
That’s why, in early March, veteran-led disaster response nonprofit Team Rubicon again extended its operations in three Georgia counties—Toombs, Coffee, and Richmond—and began investigating spinning up a new one in Buncombe County, NC. The extensions make Team Rubicon’s Georgia Hurricane Helene recovery work the longest continuous operation in its 15-year history, usurping its 2023-’24 Hurricane Ian response.
“We’re still there because there are still people who need help,” says Mike Watkins, director of branch operations for Team Rubicon. “I would say, these people need more help because they’ve been living in this situation since the onset of the storm.”
The people Team Rubicon is helping return to their homes are typically elderly, those not being served by insurance, or those who simply don’t have the capacity to do the work themselves, Watkins explains. The “we” Watkins is referring to is Team Rubicon’s 80 disaster relief volunteers—known as Greyshirts—who are on the ground sawing downed trees, swamping vegetative debris to curbs, mucking once-flooded homes, and even tarping roofs in unserved Georgia communities.
“As a homeowner, if the trees fell yesterday, you would need some help. Now imagine you’ve been living like that for six months and you’re still looking at these trees in your yard and not knowing what you’re gonna do. There is immediacy there,” he says.
Beyond just the ongoing stress of seeing the wreckage all around is the challenge of cleaning it up. A vast portion of the trees that came down and remain down are dense, large, 100-year-old trees. Getting back to normal after that takes time.
Greyshirts will continue deploying on the Georgia Hurricane Helene recovery operations—doing everything from sawing down and bucking those trees and removing debris blocking access to properties to mucking out flooded homes and even tarping roofs, all at no cost to the homeowners—until at least early April.
“When somebody comes and does it for you for free, that’s really just neighbors helping neighbors,” says Watkins.
Volunteer for Georgia Hurricane Helene Recovery
Greyshirts: Team Rubicon is still serving survivors of the 2024 hurricanes in the American Southeast. Register your availability to deploy on Operation Trojan Moon in Roll Call, now.
