A.J. Asci paced his front yard with his cell phone glued to his ear.
He was awaiting a call back from Georgia Power. Asci was one of the only people on East 66th Street in Savannah whose power was out.
There was good reason. At 5:30 a.m. Saturday, Hurricane Matthew sent a neighbor’s pecan tree crashing through part of his house, landing in his backyard, inches away from his chicken coop.
The chickens are fine. “But my backyard is a jungle,” said Asci as he navigated through the tiny area Tuesday.
Just days after one of the worst storms to hit coastal Georgia in decades, Asci was among the thousands either returning home or assessing the damage Matthew left behind.
Residents were arriving back for the first time to St. Simons and Sea islands in Glynn County on Tuesday. And power was flickering back on up and down the shoreline. More than 64,000 people remain without power along the coast, down from some 400,000 in the immediate aftermath of the storm Saturday. Four people died in Georgia as a result of Matthew, a Category 2 hurricane when it pummeled Georgia’s shoreline.
In Savannah, the coast’s largest city, Mayor Eddie DeLoach said Tuesday that power is back for about 60 percent of the city. Georgia Power is expected to push that number up to 90 percent by Wednesday, he said. If that happens, a countywide curfew from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m. is expected to be lifted.
Throughout the city, municipal, and private crews began the slow process of cleaning up the damage and debris left in Matthew’s wake.
“By Wednesday, everything will be running smooth,” DeLoach said.
About a quarter of Chatham County’s residents chose not to heed the advice of authorities and evacuate. Asci was among those who stayed.
“I have been in this house for 14 years and I have never had something like this happen,” Asci said. “I heard all of it. I came out and said ‘holy (crap).’”
“But we are lucky,” he said. “No one was hurt or died.”
While the storm spared many of Savannah’s oldest and most historic homes, the trees in Georgia’s oldest city took a beating. More than 200 trees were reported to have fallen.
Down the street from Asci, a neighbor’s giant pine tree had fallen into the middle of the street. Amazingly, it didn’t touch a house. But it destroyed a car, which was still pinned beneath it in the street.
Theresa Campbell, a local nurse who lives across the street, couldn’t help but find some humor in the situation.
“Now we live on a cul de sac,” she said. “And I am not terribly upset.”
Campbell had just returned home. She and her family fled inland to Albany. Ironically, she was living in Albany in 1994 when Tropical Storm Alberto flooded that city.
“So when they said, ‘leave,’ we packed up and said ‘bye,’” said Campbell. She spent all day Tuesday cleaning up debris from her front yard, which now looks immaculate.
Next door, roofers repaired a neighbor’s home, while cars slowly drove up to gawk at the fallen pine.
Mayor DeLoach, at a midday press conference, also warned homeowners about scammers. There have already been dozens of reports about phony contractors without proper licenses coming into town.
“People will take your money,” DeLoach said. “There are thieves out there and they don’t have to have a gun to rob you.”
Wilhelmenia Dean, who has lived in Savannah since 1949, arrived back around noon on Tuesday after having been camped out with relatives in Sumter, S.C. since Thursday.
“It seemed urgent to get out,” said the 90-year-old Dean, who has never evacuated before. “I had an alderman who came in and urged everybody to leave.”
Driving back into town, she said she was surprised by what seems like a lack of damage. Her first stop was at a Denny’s to get lunch and dinner. She knows the first thing she will have to do when she gets home is clean out her refrigerator. But when she arrived at her house, on the Westside of Savannah, it was almost as if the storm didn’t happen. It was that clean.
“It looks like we could have stayed,” said Dean.
Rick Bongiovanni, who moved to Savannah two years ago from Philadelphia and survived Hurricane Sandy there, didn’t evacuate ahead of Matthew and never had a problem. He said he didn’t lose power and suffered no damage. On Tuesday, he and his boxer, Fritzy strolled through their neighborhood on their walk. Bongiovanni wanted to see that big tree that had fallen on East 66th.
“If I lived close to Tybee Island, I would have evacuated. But it didn’t seem like it was going to be that bad here,” Bongiovanni said. “Things are looking good here. I think the city is doing the absolute best they can to get us back to normal.”
Further south, residents were allowed back on St. Simons and Sea islands at noon, the last of the state’s major barrier islands to reopen. But with limited checkpoints, traffic was clogged.
Jane Fraser and her husband were still stranded in a motel room waiting for permission to go back home on Sea Island.
Power outages on the island disrupted its sewage system, which had health officials warning of a potential public health problem. But a boil water advisory has since been lifted.
The island was supposed to re-open at noon, but with limited checkpoints, traffic was backed up for miles. She said that while evacuees have not been able to return, those who stayed have been allowed to stay.
“All of the people who did not evacuate are in their homes and are being rewarded for not evacuating,” Fraser said. “This is certainly going to make a lot of people unhappy. We just want to get home.”
Officials said St. Simons Island would be open to the general public Wednesday.
Dionne Hoskins Brown is in no rush to get home. She and Akino Brown are driving around Thomasville on what she calls their “noneymoon.”
The couple had scheduled a grand outdoor wedding for 200 at Dunham Farms in Midway on Oct. 8.
But by Tuesday, it was already in doubt. The owners of the venue were calling. Her sorority sisters, who were coordinating the wedding, were calling.
“When we saw the trajectory and category, we knew it couldn’t happen. We didn’t want people trying to think about the wedding when they should be securing their property,” said Brown, a marine biologist.
By 8 a.m. Wednesday, the wedding was postponed. The couple got their wedding certificate on Thursday. They were the last ones in the office before the government shut down.
“I wanted to elope from day one,” Brown said. “But my sisters were saying ‘you never been married, you must have a wedding.’ So I put all of this energy in this and finally stopped being a curmudgeon about it. Then Matthew hit.”
The wedding has been rescheduled for Nov. 12 and the couple plans to honeymoon in the Virgin Islands.
“Lightning can’t strike twice,” Brown said.
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