Georgia Today: Tornado hits Conyers; Chattahoochee "protected green space"; Keith Lee returns to ATL

Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Wednesday, April 3. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, cleanup efforts are underway after a tornado touched down in Conyers last night. Another mile of the Chattahoochee River is becoming protected greenspace. And food reviewing TikToker Keith Lee says he plans to give Atlanta another try. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.

 

Story 1:

Peter Biello: A likely tornado touched down in Conyers just before midnight on Tuesday after a night of severe weather. Cleanup efforts are underway in Rockdale County. GPB's Pamela Kirkland reports.

Matthew Dagbovi: I have some friends and family over here, and they got hit pretty hard.

Pamela Kirkland: Matthew Dagbovi owns a local roofing and renovation business in Conyers, Ga., southeast of Atlanta. He surveyed the area after the storm and says damage to property he's seen has been substantial.

Matthew Dagbovi: I passed property where the entire carport has basically fallen in. Kind of looks like half of the house has fallen.

Pamela Kirkland: The National Weather Service says it plans to survey the damage Wednesday afternoon. Nicole Listema is a senior forecaster with the National Weather Service.

Nicole Listema: It was a radar-confirmed tornado. That means we could see debris in the air from the tornado on the radar.

Pamela Kirkland: Dagbovi says he'll be helping his neighbors make sure they get what they need.

Matthew Dagbovi: Kind of lend a hand, get some tarps, you know, get people secure.

Pamela Kirkland: For GPB News, I'm Pamela Kirkland.

 

Story 2:

Peter Biello: Another mile of frontage along the Chattahoochee River is being added to protected greenspace in metro Atlanta. The trust for Public Lands said yesterday it's acquired nearly 500 acres, currently used for timber harvesting, across from the Chattahoochee Bend State Park in Coweta County. The land will be added to a nature preserve that's planned to be the southern end of a proposed 100-mile linear park called Chattahoochee Riverlands from Buford to Newnan. That larger project broke ground in Mableton last year.

 

Story 3:

Peter Biello: Spelman College is joining colleges and universities across the country in extending their deadline for when incoming students need to submit their enrollment deposits. The decision this week comes after a series of delays from the new FAFSA form. Chelsea Holly is the director of admissions at Spelman. She says she expects to get access to student FAFSA data by mid-April.

Chelsea Holly: And so we rely on that data in order to give our students aid letters. We also have a high population of Pell-eligible students. And so those students depend on this data even more than I would say, just the general college-going population.

Peter Biello: She says she hopes to get students their aid letters out by May 1, so they can make their decisions by the new deadline of May 15. Other universities in Georgia, like the University of Georgia and Georgia College and State University, have similarly extended their deadlines for enrollment deposits.

 

Story 4:

Peter Biello: Kaiser Permanente is investing nearly a half million dollars to support the work of Resilient Georgia and its Mental Health Workforce Accelerator program. The Accelerator program addresses the workforce shortage in mental health and substance misuse treatment. Charmaine Ward Milner is with Kaiser Permanente of Georgia.

Charmaine Ward Milner: So we look at them as a tremendous asset in terms of a partner for the work that we're trying to do, and that is to increase access to mental health, number one, and number two, to create or develop more minority mental health practitioners.

Peter Biello: She says 152 of Georgia's 159 counties are federally designated as mental health shortage areas.

 

Story 5:

Peter Biello: Officials say the aftermath of last year's fiery train derailment in eastern Ohio doesn't qualify as a public health emergency. The derailment of Atlanta-based Norfolk Southern train cars forced the evacuation of half the town of East Palestine and generated health concerns related to the chemicals that spilled out. The Environmental Protection Agency never approved that designation, because the agency's tests haven't shown ongoing chemical exposure, and health agencies haven't documented widespread problems. Norfolk Southern has already spent more than $1 billion to address the aftermath of the derailment. The railroad has promised to create a fund to help people pay for long-term health needs, but that hasn't happened yet.

 

Story 6:

Peter Biello: Officials broke ground Monday on a new full-service acute care hospital west of Augusta in Grovetown. Wellstar Columbia County Medical Center will feature 100 inpatient beds, a Level 2 trauma center and a 90,000-square-foot medical office building that will include primary care, women's health and other specialties. Hospital officials say its proximity to I-20 will make access to care convenient and create more jobs, adding that the new hospital is meant to complement services already provided at Wellstar MGC Health in Augusta. The new hospital is expected to open in 2026.

Caption

The Hyundai logo is displayed on the facade of a dealership, Monday, Feb. 6, 2023, in Manchester, N.H.

Credit: AP Photo/Charles Krupa

Story 7:

Peter Biello: Automaker Hyundai is sponsoring a study abroad trip to Korea for Columbia State University students. The South Korean automaker's investment of $60,000 will cover half of each student's travel expenses. The goal is to help students learn more about the country, its history, culture and growing importance to Georgia's economy. Hyundai owns a Kia manufacturing plant in West Point, Ga., and is investing more than $12 billion in an electric vehicle plant near Savannah and an EV battery cell plant in Bartow County. The two new manufacturing facilities are expected to employ 12,000 workers.

 

Story 8:

Peter Biello: Another North Atlantic right whale has been found dead. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says they were notified of a dead whale off the coast of Virginia on Saturday. The whale was identified as an adult female first seen in 1989 and who gave birth to her sixth calf this winter. A necropsy will determine her cause of death. She is the 40th mortality since 2017 and the fourth this year. NOAA says North Atlantic right whales are approaching extinction. The primary causes of death are entanglements in fishing gear and vessel strikes.

 

Story 9:

Peter Biello: Food reviewing TikToker Keith Lee says he plans to give it another try. The social media food critic sparked an uproar last year when he panned the city in his scathing reviews of several restaurants. GPB's Orlando Montoya reports.

Orlando Montoya: Lee says he received death threats after his Atlanta visit, but will return as part of a, quote, "redemption tour." Atlanta journalist and documentary filmmaker King Williams has been following the popular but controversial Las Vegas based-influencer.

King Williams: It's a little bit of a surprise, mostly because what happened in October of last year was such a terrible experience for Keith that I just thought he was done with Atlanta.

Orlando Montoya: Reaction to Lee's planned return is mixed. Many Atlanta restaurateurs question his methods and restaurant choices. Others hope his next visit will shine light on better choices for his 16 million followers. There is no word on when or where he'll visit. For GPB News, I'm Orlando Montoya.

 

Story 10:

Peter Biello: Genetic testing has been available for decades, and genetic testing as part of family planning can identify risks of more than 200 known disorders. But whole genome testing can identify mutations connected to even rarer diseases, or maybe even diseases yet to be discovered. GPB's Ellen Eldridge has more.

Ellen Eldridge: For Jansen Jones, tummy time wasn't enough.

Suzanne Jones: Right, apparently, we weren't doing enough of it already.

Ellen Eldridge: At 5 months of age, she was missing developmental milestones. She had low muscle tone and did not use her arms and legs.

Suzanne Jones: So we were just told, "She's behind. No big deal. Do some physical therapy."

Ellen Eldridge: That's her mother and lifelong advocate.

Suzanne Jones: I'm Suzanne Jones and I am Jansen's mom and she's my third child.

Ellen Eldridge: When Jansen didn't babble on time, her parents started her in speech therapy and then occupational therapy. Then Jones turned to genetic testing.

Suzanne Jones: In my opinion, if it's genetics, that's the underlying cause of everything. And so that should show us what is going on.

Ellen Eldridge: Jones' doctors described the 46 chromosomes in the body as chapters in a book, but back then, genetic tests could only scan 1% of the book. Those tests didn't surface anything.

Suzanne Jones: And so we got results back when she was 3, and it did not show us what was going on.

Ellen Eldridge: Finding nothing to explain her symptoms, the Jones family had to assume Jansen was just generally delayed.

Suzanne Jones: She just sort of sat and was, you know, sweet and happy, but really just not engaged. So we wondered what was going on. Right?

Jansen Jones: Yes.

Ellen Eldridge: Then came a newer test: Whole genome sequencing.

Suzanne Jones: The most mack-daddy, comprehensive test to look at, you know, genetic mutations is whole genome analysis.

Ellen Eldridge: If early reads of Jansen's genetic book had doctors looking for known disorders on dogeared and highlighted pages from previous research, the whole genome sequence allowed them to spellcheck every word.

Suzanne Jones: And that is what ended up catching it.

Ellen Eldridge: A disorder caused by a single gene mutation called SYNGAP1.

Suzanne Jones: This mutation was discovered only a year before Jansen was born.

Ellen Eldridge: If you have a rare disease, there's an 80% chance that it's genetic. That doesn't mean the cause has been identified yet. Karen Grinzaid is with Emory University School of Medicine. She says that's why everyone planning a family should get tested.

Karen Grinzaid: And the reason is there are genetic diseases that can happen that haven't shown up in your family yet, that are not more common in your — you know, given your ethnic background.

Ellen Eldridge: She says we all carry a number of recessive genes, and we don't know what those genes are unless we have an affected child or we do genetic testing. But a whole genome test like Jansen's might also make would-be parents nervous.

Karen Grinzaid: When you do broader testing like that, it may — it may turn up problems that where where it's not clear what the implications are.

Ellen Eldridge: For some, that can be unnecessarily stressful.

Karen Grinzaid: I just can't overemphasize the importance of genetic counseling to help people through this journey.

Ellen Eldridge: It's a journey that has to be paid for, too. While whole genome sequencing has been commercially available for about six years, it was only last year. Industry giants UnitedHealthCare and Cigna began covering it in some circumstances. So does Georgia Medicaid. Genetic testing is covered for children when medically necessary. Out of pocket, the test runs about $1,000. Suzanne Jones says even though her daughter's diagnosis hasn't changed her daughter's developmental issues, the genomic sequencing was worth it.

Suzanne Jones: It's an answer. We can finally say we understand what all these different symptoms are caused by.

Ellen Eldridge: And that, Jones says, makes it a lot less scary to be a parent. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.

Story 11:

Peter Biello: In sports, the Braves lost to the Chicago White Sox yesterday to give Chicago its first win of the season: Final score, 3 to 2. Braves starter Reynaldo Lopez, who pitched for the White Sox for seven seasons, went six innings in his Braves debut. The 30-year-old right hander gave up one run and four hits. The game plan for today in Chicago has been postponed due to snow and rain. It'll be made up in June. Spencer Strider will start at the home opener on Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks. And in the NBA, the Hawks face the Detroit Pistons at home in Atlanta tonight. Hawks are currently playing without Trae Young, who is recovering from a finger injury; Saddiq Bey, who is out for the season with a knee injury; and A.J. Griffin, who's out with an ankle injury.

And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you want to learn more about any of these stories, visit GPB.org/news and remember to subscribe to this podcast. That way, we'll come back automatically in your podcast feed tomorrow afternoon with all the top stories from Georgia. And if you know of a story we should be covering or have some feedback about this podcast, we would love to hear from you. Send us a note by email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org. I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

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For more on these stories and more, go to GPB.org/news