NAHUNTA, Ga. — The Brantley County Wildfire has now destroyed 87 homes and displaced an estimated 150 people.
Residents are scattered throughout the area at various churches, just waiting to hear from officials on when they can visit the neighborhoods they used to call home.
Wanda Bennett, who’s been staying at First Baptist Church in Nahunta since Tuesday, has not lost her home. But she says getting information about recovery efforts and ongoing conditions has been difficult.
“Basically, what it is is somebody finds out a piece of information and they tell it to somebody else, and somebody else finds things, and we just keep gathering scraps and putting them together,” Bennett said. “If you get people that don’t know how to run the internet at all, then they don’t know how to do that.”
She said her daughter is staying in her home, but she doesn’t feel safe enough to go back herself. She says she plans to be at the church until Friday or Saturday.
Another woman, Lesia Grogg and her husband, William, say they staying with their parents after the fire demolished their home of 30 years. They say that they feel left in the dark.
“There has been no Red Cross, no FEMA, no nothing here. I don’t care what y’all’ve been told. There’s been no help to none of us so far, and that’s not fair,” Grogg said.
County officials say that the Brantley County wildfire has not yet been declared for FEMA assistance, but other agencies like GEMA, Red Cross and the Salvation Army arrived on scene today.
“I just feel that there should be more people reaching out to help, people in my neighborhood to help us to help all the other families, and there’s not been nothin, reaching out to any of us,” Grogg said.
Chuck White, the director of Emergency Management for Camden County, says they’re working on setting up a functional, long-term recovery center.
“Those that have been impacted, victims, and start to look at how they can help them socially, psychologically and economically,” White said.
He said they’re working out the specific details of long-term recovery efforts in a meeting tomorrow.
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