National Weather Service director thanks Glynn County for partnership during hurricane

Oct. 20--As Hurricane Matthew went along its course, emergency officials up and down the East coast were working together to track the storm and keep community members safe.

"I can't say enough about the cooperation, the morale -- everybody stayed in a good state of mind throughout it," said Jay Wiggins, Glynn County's director of emergency management. "It was very nerve-wracking, and it was unprecedented for our community in our lifetimes."

Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, stopped in Glynn County on Wednesday to survey the effects of Hurricane Matthew in the area and to thank the community for working with the center during the storm.

"Working together is a way that we can learn from an event like this," said Knabb, who spoke at a Brunswick-Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce meeting.

He said the question isn't whether a storm like Hurricane Matthew will hit again, but when it will hit.

"It could be worse next time," Knabb said.

A National Weather Service meteorologist was embedded in Glynn County with emergency officials throughout the hurricane, Wiggins said, to provide constant updates on the storm.

"Late Friday night ... he turned and looked at me and said, 'I'm scared,'" Wiggins said. "And I tell you, you don't want your meteorologist to say that."

Wiggins said Hurricane Matthew got closer than many realize to possibly destroying Glynn County.

"We had the potential of having a Sandy or Katrina right here," Wiggins said. "I was born and raised here in Glynn County. I grew up here, my friends and family are here. And it scared me. It scared me to think that you could have that kind of impact here and that we could see loss of life."

But he said Glynn County, as has been the case in the past, found itself to be very lucky.

"I'll give credit where the credit is due -- we were blessed," Wiggins said. "The storm took a little bit of a different track. The timing was so that the tide was out at the time that it came through, so that had a huge impact."

Al Sandrik, a National Weather Service warning coordination meteorologist stationed in Jacksonville, said many other communites were hit much harder.

"Other folks nearby were not nearly so lucky," Sandrik said. "Probably the most heartbreaking thing I saw was a small child taking all her stuffed animals out to the curb. So understand how lucky you got."

Wiggins said he hopes that Glynn County residents will begin now to prepare for the next hurricane.

"Places that are not hit on a regular basis by storms become complacent," he said. "We've been very fortunate here."

He said much of his team's time is spent educating Glynn County residents on safety preparations.

"Safety's a hard thing to sell," he said. "People don't want to think about it."

Key ways to prepare include making one's home stronger, creating an evacuation plan, getting the needed insurance and buying supplies, Knabb said.

"So many of the things we need to do to get through the storm and the aftermath need to be done well in advance," Knabb said.

Many local residents have misconceptions about why Glynn County so often does not get hit by hurricanes, Wiggins said.

Knabb said a hurricane is steered by larger weather systems surrounding it in the atmosphere, and ocean patterns do not affect its path.

"There's no physical reason why you can't have as strong as a Category 5 hurricane coming right over this community," Knabb said.

Throughout Glynn County's history, the area has gone through periods during which many major hurricanes hit hard and caused serious damage, Sandrik said.

"If you'd have told someone in the 19th century that this area was immune to hurricane landfall, they would have looked at you like you were stupid, because of the number of major hurricanes that made landfall in Coastal Georgia," he said.

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