Ten years ago, the Augusta area was the hardest hit in the state by Winter Storm Pax.
The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore landed in Augusta on Feb. 11, 2014 to report on the event. School was canceled and the community braced for the inevitable.
Residents woke up Feb. 12 to an inch-or-more-thick blanket of ice. Most had no power for days.
Pam Tucker, who spent 21 years in emergency management for Richmond County before joining Columbia County government in 1999, remembers it very well.
The two counties’ response to the storm revealed contrasts.
“We knew it was coming three days ahead of time, so we started preparing,” said Tucker, who was director of Columbia County Emergency and Operations division.
The ice would destroy 15,000 trees and tangle power lines, with 85% of Columbia County households without power at any given time, she said.
Columbia activated its Emergency Operations Center and shelters for several days.
Gov. Nathan Deal toured the damage and requested a major disaster declaration for 48 counties and on March 6, President Obama declared it.
MORE: Remembering the ice storm in the CSRA
The career emergency manager would welcome her first grandchild, Aria Rose, at 2:06 p.m. Feb. 12. Tucker was holding Aria two days later when the 4.1-magnitude “Valentine’s Day Quake” struck near Edgefield.
“I was holding the baby and the earthquake happened. It was very surreal and something I will never forget,” she said.
What many Augustans didn’t expect were the massive amounts of debris – falling limbs and trees – brought down by the ice.
But Columbia County did, and had competitively-bid contracts with debris-hauling and monitoring firms already in place.
“All we had to do is call them and say ‘show up,’” Tucker said. “Everything went very smoothly and by September, we were cleaned up and done.”
In the end cleanup from the storm cost Columbia County just over $10 million. FEMA and GEMA reimbursed 92% of the cost to remove some 535,000 cubic yards of debris from the county.
“Our preparedness efforts saved our taxpayers over $2.5 million,” Tucker said.
While many Richmond County residents were getting Tucker’s social media updates about the storm, Augusta leadership was in a different place.
The Augusta Commission had fired administrator Fred Russell in December and IT Director Tameka Allen was serving as interim administrator. Former traffic engineer Steve Cassell was interim deputy administrator.
And while then-Fire Chief Chris James had served as EMA director for two years, the Garden City had no debris removal plan.
What ensued was Augusta “piggy-backing” on two contracts held by coastal Georgia counties for hurricane debris removal. FEMA was critical of the sole-source, no-bid contracts.
The city would pay more than $17 million to the two firms, Ashbritt Environmental and Leidos Inc. by June, to remove some 736,000 cubic yards of debris.
The hit to the city’s rainy-day fund contributed to the Augusta Commission’s July decision to raise property taxes for the first time in seven years.
By 2020, Augusta had been reimbursed for the bulk of the storm cleanup, although it took years of legal wrangling.
As of 2020 it had entered pre-event agreements, which presumably remain in place, with Ceres Environmental Services for debris removal and Witt O’Brien for financial recovery services.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
