Georgia overdue for major hurricane, but few worry

It’s tempting to see a collective cockiness in the lack of hurricane shutters, in the new beachfront castles and in the conventional wisdom that, last week, was repeated over and over again on St. Simons Island.

“Looks like Hanna’s going like the others,” Brian Cauley, a marina forklift operator, said of the tropical storm originally forecast to hit Georgia. “Right up the Gulf Stream.”

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Some of the sand at St. Simons Island is in bags set down to hold back erosion at beachfront properties of the island. The most recent significant damage to the island was by Tropical Storm Dora, which took out a street.

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Pouya Dianat/pdianat@ajc.com

Key Clark, whose house near Gould’s Inlet on St. Simons Island doesn’t have storm shutters, admits that even as hurricanes like Hanna and Ike have breezed past, the Georgia coast is overdue for a huge storm. For now, he’s willing to live with the risk.

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Seemingly everyone here, from Yankee newcomers to natives such as the 49-year-old Cauley, cite the warm-water current – and Georgia’s position as the westernmost point on the East Coast — as the reasons no major hurricane has raked the state’s coast in more than a century.

Yet there was worry, not bravado, in Cauley’s voice Thursday. He was tracking Hurricane Ike, a Category 4 storm half an ocean away. “We’ve been lucky,” he said days before Ike, too, would settle on a path away from Georgia. “And you can’t be lucky forever.”

Hanna, the hurricane that wasn’t, and Ike, the one that could have been, expose the dual mindset of Georgia’s islanders. Many have doubts when forecasters stamp a bull’s-eye on their shore. But they can’t deny the reality. Georgia is overdue.

Robert Parker Jr. put it this way as he demolished a segregation-era home for African-American teachers last week, making way for new homes along the salt marsh near Richmond Hill: “When it hits, they’ll be in a world of hurt.”

In the meantime, the state’s salt-air set is expected to grow fast. The six ocean-facing counties — Chatham, Bryan, Liberty, McIntosh, Glynn and Camden — could double in population, reaching 1 million residents within 25 years, coastal officials estimate.

New homebuyers rarely mention hurricanes when scouting property on Tybee Island, said Julie Gonzalez, a local real estate agent. “They never even ask about hurricanes. They really don’t,” Gonzalez said. “Most of the homes people buy here are second homes, so they don’t worry as much about packing up and leaving as they do with their [primary] homes.”

Federally mandated flood insurance mitigates hurricane fears, she added. “As long as you have your insurance, you can rebuild – as long as Tybee is still here.”

Back at St. Simons, old-timers recall the one hint they’ve had of what a strong storm could do. Hurricane Dora had weakened to a tropical storm when it passed over the island in 1964, yet even it claimed some turf for the ocean.

Landscaper Fred Oglesby, a 52-year-old St. Simons native, pointed beyond the waves smacking against a boulder wall that separates Beachview Drive from the Atlantic. “There use to be a row of homes there,” he said. “After Dora, all that was left were pipes sticking up out of the ground.”

Last week, the ocean’s spray nearly reached the latest stucco mansion to rise behind the wall. The four-story home, still under construction, will feature a ground-level pool, a rooftop porch and an elevator connecting the two.

Sarah Wilson and her husband, an orthopedic surgeon in Kentucky, are hoping impact-resistant windows, deep pilings and steel construction harden their retreat to storms. But the best defense, Wilson said, is the location.

“St. Simons is a pretty safe place,” she said. “We feel it was a risk. But it was a calculated risk.”

Ruthie Cobb has lived on the back of St. Simons for 50 years and represents the other side when it comes to development. The multi-million-dollar homes raise property taxes, threaten to squeeze folks like her out and ignore history, the 77-year-old said. Three powerful hurricanes struck the Georgia coast during the 1890s, including one that killed 179 people. “Water covered this island once,” Cobb said, “and it’s going to come again.”

Until then, this will probably be a place where developers feast and storm-shutter salesmen starve, said Grant Vernon, former owner of Creative Window Toppers. Vernon, 72, never sold that many shutters from his St. Simons store. Even when he did, they were the decorative kind that go inside a home. “All the running around I do on this island, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a shutter — on the outside.”

There’s no need for them, said Key Clark, who lives in a five-bedroom, tabby home on the second row. “My house was built in 1948, and it’s never had a pane broken, as far as I know,” Clark said.

He rested on his mountain bike, taking in the view where Gould’s Inlet meets the Atlantic. He looked every bit the coastal cowboy, wearing swim trunks, no shirt and a crow-feathered Hawaiian hat.

Sure, a big one could always come this way, Clark said. He and his fellow islanders are no hurricane deniers, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the peace of mind that comes with geographic good fortune, he said.

Clark scoffed at the likes of Hugo and Floyd, storms that brought more reporters than danger to this sea island. Now he can add Hanna to the list.