City of Adel, Cook Co. recovery from Hurricane Helene

ADEL, Ga. – The city of Adel was one of the cities that felt the impact of Hurricane Helene. We managed to talk with a few city leaders about the trials they’ve been through since Friday morning.

Adel Mayor, Buddy Duke says that Helene’s impact was like nothing he or the people of Cook county had ever witnessed.

“It was quite traumatic for the most of us to go to bed, you know, Thursday night at 11:00, 12:00 wind whipping to the point we’ve never heard or seen before, and then all of a sudden get quiet and stays quiet for 30 or 40 minutes. And, then here we come back again with the second round. So, this was a quite an experience for all of us to have to go through,” said Mayor Buddy Duke, City of Adel.

Nearly three thousand people in the county woke up Friday without power… and public works has been hard at work making sure crews can get in.

“And, then, once we had the roads for the most part clear where we could. Our public works department, we backed up and I head of the electric department, we would go ahead and trim the limbs back and try to get the lines out to try to assist them as well. Everybody really worked together during this storm,” said T.J. Tucker, Operations Mgr.. Adel Public Works Dept.

But… in addition to the work restoring roads and power, they’ve faced another challenge…

As many in Cook county expressed worries about not being able to get in touch with loved ones.

“A lot of these trees and limbs just have taken out the power lines, along with the power lines, the phone lines get taken out. Cell phone towers are also taken out. So, communications and most of the areas are have been cut off. So, when we run into it, there are a lot of families left that cannot get in touch with other family members in the area or they can’t get to them because of the obstructions in the roads,” said P.J. Breshear, Anemoi Incident Response.

But… as they get closer to nearly having their power back online, city leaders are looking at helping those who experienced the brunt of Helene.

“But, our you know, our prayers and thoughts go out with our sister communities that had it worse than us. And, you know, once we get back on some normal business routines, you know, we want to help those folks however we can. We know a lot of folks are coming here from those communities…” said Mark Barber, City Manager, City of Adel.

And Adel city leaders aren’t the only ones who’ve been working around the clock as county and state leaders are here in Cook county Wednesday afternoon.

And… we’ll have coverage of that brief with Cook county leaders tomorrow, here on CBS 44 News.

Brian Roche reporting.

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