Bulloch Co. continues to recover from Debby one year later

by Olivia Wright

BULLOCH COUNTY, Ga. (WTOC) - August 5th marks one year since Tropical Storm Debby made landfall as a category 1 hurricane in Florida.

The National Weather Service says Debby weakened to a tropical storm as it slowly moved across Southeast Georgia.

One community in our region is still repairing severe damage to their infrastructure due to the storm.

Bulloch County EMA Director Corey Kemp says, “the amount of flooding all over this county was...unbelievable.”

The day after Tropical Storm Debby, the Bulloch County Emergency Management Team says around 50 roads were either damaged or flooded.

The EMA Director Corey Kemp says that the storm took a shift when multiple dams across the county breached.

“We were not expecting the dam failures. The water all over the city and county. Things we were not ready for were water rescues.”

Kemp says after they had to make several unprepared water rescues, new protocols went into place.

“Now, we are 100% prepared, we have three teams throughout the county from Statesboro Fire, Bulloch Fire, and Sheriff Department. So, we are ready to tackle that is it ever happened again.”

Kemp says that only one of those breached dams has been repaired over the past year.

All of them are located on private property.

A few roads like this one, Nevils Denmark Road, are still being repaired as a part of this long recovery process.

Kemp says going into this hurricane season, the whole county is preparing differently after what they learned from Tropical Storm Debby.

“We are going to prepare a little differently this year. Last year, we were just using a five-day preparedness before the storm coming. This year we switched to a seven day to give us a little bit more time to prepare. To give us more time to pull maps and understand the dynamics of how the water flows in Bulloch County.”