BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) – As Hurricane Matthew swirled along the Atlantic Coast of Florida, people on Georgia’s barrier islands had one last chance to travel inland before hunkering down and riding out the storm.
Jeff Dickey had been holding out hope that the forecast might shift and spare his waterfront home on Tybee Island, near Savannah, but by Friday morning the storm was already being felt on the Georgia coast, and he decided staying wasn’t worth the risk.
“We kind of tried to wait to see if it will tilt more to the east,” Dickey said. “But it’s go time.”
With soaking rain already falling from the outer bands of the Category 3 storm, he loaded a diesel-powered generator into his pickup truck before hitting the road.
Most of the island’s 3,000 residents had already evacuated. Dickey, his mother and his two daughters were among several last-minute evacuees leaving the island early Friday.
All emergency responders left Tybee Island by midday Friday as increasingly heavy rains at high tide threatened to flood the only road to the mainland.
Tybee Island Mayor Jason Buelterman was taking names of people believed to remain on the island and had police officers calling them. He said: “This is what happens when you don’t get hit by a hurricane for 100 years.”
Georgia has only 100 miles of coast tucked between South Carolina and Florida, a relatively small target for direct hurricane strikes. It’s also the westernmost part of the eastern seaboard, which helps explain why no major hurricane, Catergory 3 or greater, has made landfall on the Georgia coast since 1898.
But that doesn’t mean the past 118 years have been storm-free.
Hurricane David made landfall in Georgia as a Category 2 storm in 1979, following a very similar coastline-hugging path as Matthew. But David was a weaker storm and did little overall damage.
The Georgia coast last evacuated for Hurricane Floyd in 1999, but that storm took a last minute turn and came ashore in North Carolina.
Tropical Storm Hermine sent tree limbs falling and caused widespread power outages in the Savannah area barely a month ago, arriving over land after coming ashore as a hurricane on the Gulf coast of Florida.
In coastal Savannah, Dennis Jones, emergency management director for Chatham County, told a news conference Friday morning that people had just a few more hours before powerful winds start hitting.
“Once the wind starts blowing, we’re pulling all emergency services off the street,” he said.
Savannah police will enforce a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
Transportation officials announced the closure at noon Friday of the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, which spans the Savannah River between downtown Savannah and Hutchinson Island. Two hours earlier and farther south, they closed the Sidney Lanier Bridge to the barrier islands off Brunswick, which include Jekyll Island, Sea Island, St. Simons Island and Little St. Simons Island.
Transportation officials said high winds would likely make it difficult for drivers to control their vehicles on the bridges.
As heavy rain fell and small branches and Spanish moss began to litter the roads, a few people were still driving around on St. Simons Island and Sea Island Friday morning. But businesses were closed, some of them boarded up, and gas stations were shuttered, with plastic wrapped around every pump.
Robin and Greg Bontrager removed loose items including sails and canvas from their boat, and double-tied it to Dock 3 in Brunswick in the pouring rain Friday morning.
Retired schoolteachers who decided life was too short to skip adventures, the couple lives on the 42-foot Hunter sailboat, called “Always and Forever.” For the last two years they’ve docked in Brunswick, Georgia from June through November.
Robin Bontrager was emotional as they prepared to take their two dogs to a motel to ride out the storm, leaving the boat between several others that serve as full-time homes to fellow “cruisers.”
“No one ever wants to leave their home, whether it’s a forest fire, a tornado, a hurricane, whatever the natural disaster might be,” she said. “And we’re not sure what we’re going to come back to.”
Georgia Department of Corrections Commissioner Homer Bryson announced that his staff had moved a total of 1,543 inmates from facilities in coastal counties under mandatory evacuation orders to other lockups farther inland by 7:30 a.m. Friday.
The National Hurricane Center warned that tropical storm conditions were expected in coastal Georgia later Friday, with hurricane conditions arriving overnight and continuing into Saturday. The warning included threats of life-threatening flooding in coastal areas.
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Associated Press writer Kate Brumback contributed to this report from Atlanta.