EDITORIAL: Hurricane impacts deeper than many people realize

Jan. 22--It can be difficult to gauge the overall scope of a hurricane's impact.

The easiest aspect to see is the physical damage wrought by the high winds that down trees and limbs and rip roofs and structures apart.

More difficult to grasp is the full extent of damage even a small amount of flooding can cause.

Although the Golden Isles was lucky to get what can be considered minimal flooding from Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Irma, which tore through the area last September, was a different situation. She brought a record storm surge to our slice of the coast that displaced hundreds of families and ruined homes and businesses.

Nearly 20 weeks later, we can look back and see just how big of an impact that flooding has had. Hundreds of people are still displaced from their homes while they wrangle with insurance companies to rebuild their damaged homes.

On a larger scale, Irma's impacts are affecting people's jobs. Resorts like Sea Palms, King & Prince and Sea Island are major pieces of our tourism-based economy. When damage renders major pieces of their business unusable, more than just the bottom line is hurt.

Sea Palms leadership told The News last week that 53 rental units it operates and relies on as valuable additions to its banquet and conference center business have been out of commission since the storm and will continue to be for possibly another six months. They say about 70 percent of the resort's banquet business comes from people renting units on site.

When 70 percent of a major portion of the resort's business is down for that long, people become out of work. Some of the 30-40 people who work in that department could be laid off, which is a crying shame considering the circumstances.

This is just one example. There are likely other businesses in other sectors of the economy that are suffering just as bad or worse, but knowing there could be as many as dozens of people lose their jobs because of a hurricane is disheartening to say the least.

We know it hurts the folks in management having to make those difficult decisions as well.

It is good to know things for the most part were back to normal quickly after Irma. Cleanup seemed to go well, the response from emergency officials was adequate and compared to other places in the world we dodged a proverbial bullet.

But the news last week from Sea Palms shows us just how deep the impacts from even an indirect hit can be.

___

(c)2018 The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.)

Visit The Brunswick News (Brunswick, Ga.) at www.thebrunswicknews.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.