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Determination After Devastation: Stories From Hurricane Irma

GPB News

As the world comes to grips with the unprecedented damage of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, millions of Americans in the southeastern United States are workingtorebuild their lives. Irma crossed into Georgia in the early morning hours of Monday, September 11, 2017. Over the next 24 hours, water inundated island and beach communities over 100 miles of coastline. Winds topping 69 miles per hour toppled trees and power lines. 1.1 million Georgians lost power and three lost their lives. For the first time in state history, all 159 counties came under a state of emergency issued by Governor Nathan Deal.

Now begins a long road to recovery. Georgia is familiar with reconstruction, from Sherman’s burning spree during the Civil War in 1864 to tornadoes that killed 12 people in Albany as recently as January. Many homes in Southwest Georgia still stand wrecked and roofless from those storms. And some coastal Georgians are still recovering from Hurricane Matthew that wrought millions of dollars of damage last October.

As Hurricane Irma approached, GPB News reporters fanned out across the state to talk to people who were evacuating or staying put to protect their homes. We reported during the storm as winds and flooding approached our own communities in Macon, Savannah, Augusta, Albany and Atlanta.

And we were on the ground in the storm’s aftermath capturing voices of people determined to piece their lives back together.

This is a Georgia ready to rebuild.

 GPB'S Rickey Bevington hosts "Determination After Devastation: Stories From Hurricane Irma," a look at how Georgians prepared and fared during the storm.

Copyright 2017 Georgia Public Broadcasting

As Senior Anchor/Correspondent, Rickey Bevington is a mainstay with Atlantans during the afternoon drive as local host for NPR's nationally syndicated "All Things Considered" weekdays from 4 to 7 p.m.
Stephen Fowler is the Producer/Back-Up Host for All Things Considered and a creative storyteller hailing from McDonough, Georgia. He graduated from Emory University with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies. The program combined the best parts of journalism, marketing, digital media and music into a thesis on the rise of the internet rapper via the intersectionality of social media and hip-hop. He served as the first-ever Executive Digital Editor of The Emory Wheel, where he helped lead the paper into a modern digital era.
Emily Jones locally hosts Morning Edition and reports on all things coastal Georgia for GPB’s Savannah bureau. Before coming to GPB, she studied broadcast journalism at the Columbia Journalism School and urban history at Brown University. She’s worked for the Wall Street Journal Radio Network, WHYY in Philadelphia, and WBRU and RIPR in Providence.
Grant came to public media after a career spent in newspaper photojournalism. As an all platform journalist he seeks to wed the values of public radio storytelling and the best of photojournalism online.
Josephine Bennett is the Station Manager at GPB Macon. She spends a lot of time volunteering in animal rescue and at any given time might be fostering dogs and puppies from the shelter in Macon.
J. Cindy Hill joins GPB after three years serving as Arts Marketing Coordinator for Mercer University in Macon, her hometown. At Mercer she worked with The Grand Opera House, Townsend School of Music, the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings, Mercer Theatre and the new Tattnall Square Center for the Arts. She was the publicist for "A Grand Mercer Christmas", a co-production of Mercer and GPB featuring violinist Robert McDuffie, the Center for Strings and Mercer Singers, which was filmed on location at The Grand in 2012 and broadcast throughout the nation on public broadcasting stations in December 2013.
Emily Cureton is the senior producer of "On Second Thought." She’s been with GPB since March 2017. Her prior experience spans producing public radio talk shows, newspaper reporting and studying foreign languages. She’s won awards in all three pursuits. More importantly, her work has driven civil conversations and held elected officials accountable. Emily has lived in New York, Texas, California and Oregon. She spent time in Russia, and road-tripped through Mexico and Central America. Emily always wants to hear about what’s going on where you live. If you’ve got an idea for GPB to cover, send her an email.
Maura Currie