As Hurricane Milton bears down on the Florida coast, it’s stirring dreadful reminders of what happened less than two weeks ago. On Sept. 27, the Southeast was slammed by Hurricane Helene, leaving behind a path of death and destruction that has so far claimed 227 lives.
While the worst of the storm struck the Florida Big Bend area, East-Central Georgia, and western North Carolina, some in Northeast Georgia felt Helen’s fury, too.
Laine Richardson of Habersham County lost her home in the storm. She recalls the exact moment when a tree crashed into it.
“It happened at 6:58 a.m.,” she says, pulling up a text she sent to a friend saying, ‘A tree just fell through my roof.'”
“It was terrifying,” Richardson tells Now Habersham.
Richardson moved to Habersham County on New Liberty Road just a year and a half ago. She is originally from Winter Garden, a suburb of Orlando, in central Florida. The Orlando area felt the effects of Hurricane Helene with strong winds and heavy rain.
Orlando is now in the forecasted path of Hurricane Milton that is churning in the western Gulf of Mexico, heading for central Florida. That hurricane is expected to make land fall late Wednesday near Tampa as a major category storm.
A large oak tree in her back yard crashed through her kitchen coming to rest near her front door in her living room. The tree basically cut her house in half, leaving destruction in its wake.
Richardson said that after the tree fell, she wanted to run through the house but couldn’t. “At that point, there was no place to be safe in the house.”
That night, it was just Richardson and her four cats alone in the house. She said that they didn’t sleep much during the night as she could hear the winds picking up and hearing trees cracking around her.
“I heard the crack and I was standing, it couldn’t have been more than a foot away from when the ceiling dropped down,” she said.
Richardson said that being nervous during the storm is what saved her. She was pacing back and forth as she listened to the fury of the storm. ”I was so scared,” she said.
Time to flee
After the tree fell, she said her thought was to flee but it was dark and she couldn’t see. Richardson said that her keys were by her front door. In order to get to them. She had to crawl under the tree to get her keys.
After retrieving her keys and her purse, she was able to make her way out of the house to her car. She said that she couldn’t move her car because trees were blocking her driveway and more trees were falling.
Habersham emergency response
Immediately after the tree fell, she called 911. Habersham Emergency Services responded to her call. “I can’t say enough good things,” she said about the emergency response team. They tried helping her retrieve her cats but since the guys were strangers, the cats were terrified.
The team told her that she needed to leave due to all of the trees still falling at that time. They helped her get turned around and cleared her driveway enough for her to leave.
“I was actually kind of trapped until they came,” she said.
Unfortunately, she had to leave her cats for several hours until the storm passed. She has a friend from Florida that lives in Clarkesville, just a few miles away. That is where Richardson escaped to after leaving her cats.
However, as the storm moved out, she and her friend returned to her house later and were able to retrieve her cats and survey the damage.
Even with her harrowing experience, Richardson considers herself fortunate to have survived the storm despite the damage to her home. “It’s little blessings along the way,” she said.
Hurricane experience
She is no stranger to hurricanes having grown up in Florida, living through several in her lifetime. She is aware of their strength and the destruction they bring first hand.
That is the main reason why she moved to northeast Georgia, to get away from the storms and the aftermath.
Richardson lived in her family home that was 100 years old. She said that the cost of maintaining it over the years had just become too much.
