October 9, 2024
DULUTH, Ga. – Georgia Baptist Disaster Relief crews have been placed on alert in case they're need to cleanup after Hurricane Nicole, which slammed Florida’s Atlantic coast early Thursday before turning north toward Georgia.
Now downgraded to a tropical storm, Nicole had drenched the whole of Florida with heavy rain that have since moved into Georgia, the Carolinas and Alabama.
Damaging winds extended as far as 450 miles from the storm's center.
“We feel strongly that we need to put Georgia Disaster Relief on ‘alert status’ at this point,” Disaster Relief Director Dwain Carter wrote in an email to volunteers on Tuesday.
Carter called for volunteers to check equipment and get ready in case there is a deployment.
“Make all the necessary personal arrangements that may be needed,” he said in the email.
In Florida, residents in Flagler, Palm Beach and Volusia counties had been ordered to evacuate from barrier islands, low-lying areas and mobile homes effective Wednesday.
Volusia County Manager George Recktenwald had called the incoming storm “a direct threat to both property and life.”
The Associated Press reported that hurricane warnings extended from Boca Raton to Daytona Beach and tropical storm warnings were issued for the entire state and into Georgia.
Jack Beven, a National Hurricane Center forecaster, told The Associated Press the storm has a “very large cyclonic envelope," meaning its effects would be felt not only along the central Florida coastline but as far north as Georgia.
Nicole made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane about 3 a.m. Thursday, more than a hundred miles south of Daytona Beach Shores, before its maximum sustained winds dropped to 60 mph.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
