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Georgia Today: Tropical Storm Helene headed for GA; Apalachee students reacclimate; Dockworker strike
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On the Tuesday, Sept. 24 edition of Georgia Today: A hurricane is headed towards Georgia; Apalachee High School officials are providing counselors, therapy dogs, and an increased police presence as students return to school; and dockworkers in Brunswick and Savannah will most likely go on strike next week.
Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Tuesday, Sept. 24. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, a hurricane is headed towards Georgia. Apalachee High School officials are providing counselors, therapy, dogs and more police as students return to school. And dockworkers in Brunswick and Savannah will most likely go on strike next week. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.
Story 1:
Peter Biello: Tropical Storm Helene is expected to make landfall as a major hurricane in the Florida panhandle on Thursday and bring dangerous flooding and damaging winds to Georgia. Georgia Emergency Management Agency director James Stallings urged residents to prepare.
James Stallings: This storm is very different than we just had with Hurricane Debby. If you remember just recently, Hurricane Debby was a very slow, heavy rain event. This is going to be a fast-moving wind event with rain. There are significant impacts across Georgia. We're looking at hurricane force winds within a 50 mile radius of I-75 south of Macon. And then tropical storm force winds, possibly statewide. If you remember, back in the early 90s, a Hurricane Opal, we had those significant wind events all the way up into the North Georgia mountains. This is another opportunity to experience that. We fully anticipate widespread power outages from a significant number of downed trees and power lines all throughout the state. Rainfall totals are expected to be 4 to 8in statewide, with higher totals possible in the north Georgia mountains, leading to the threat of flash flooding.
Peter Biello: The National Weather Service says a flood risk begins tomorrow with tropical storm conditions expected Thursday and Friday, even in North Georgia. We will always have the latest on the storm at GPB.org/storms.
Story 2:
Peter Biello: The chief executive in charge of Georgia's two busy seaports at Savannah and Brunswick says a strike by dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts seems likely next week. But Griff Lynch of the Georgia Ports Authority says he's hopeful it would only last a few days. A looming work stoppage could shut down ports from Maine to Texas if union and port officials don't reach an agreement by Oct. 1.
Story 3:
Peter Biello: Two and a half weeks since the fatal mass shooting there, Apalachee High School students have begun returning to school. It's something teachers and school administrators have been preparing for by seeking expert help in how to support children who've experienced trauma. GPB's Ellen Eldridge has more.
Ellen Eldridge: It's the day before students return. The flag in front of the school still waves from half staff. Flowers and tributes to the dead and wounded decorate the base of the flagpole as teachers ready Apalachee High for open house.
Intercom: Please join me in making today a great day.
Ellen Eldridge: Tomorrow will be tough, as will the rest of the school year for students who lived through the Apalachee shooting. They're returning to part-time classes this week. David Schonfeld was here weeks ago helping the school prepare for their return. He's the director of the National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Barrow County Schools invited Schonfeld to Apalachee High right after the shooting. He stayed a week, training mental health crisis teams to support survivors during their first week back.
David Schonfeld: First off, what we try and do is minimize the amount of what we would call kind of traumatic triggers. So it may be that they go back to the school, but they don't go back to the same location in the school.
Ellen Eldridge: Monday's four-hour open house allowed students and their parents to walk through the building and reconnect with teachers. J-Hall, where the shooting took place, is closed and will be for the rest of the year. Any student who has class there will take a bus a mile and a half away to another school-owned building instead. The hope, says Schonfeld, is that the rest of the school building can be a safe space.
David Schonfeld: But it isn't just that they're returning back to the site where a tragedy occurred. They're also returning to their school, where they have other, positive associations, hopefully.
Ellen Eldridge: Sonya Turner is the mother of two children who were in Apalachee High School the day of the shooting. She says school officials have said their priority for now is mental health over schoolwork.
Sonya Turner: There's not a one size fits all. They are going to be very patient with everybody, and they're trying to do things and exposures in small doses to get a, I guess, like a threshold or a temperature of where people are.
Ellen Eldridge: Turner says while some kids are eager to get back to their friends, some are so grief-stricken they can't eat. School officials are providing more counselors, therapy, dogs, and there will be an increased police presence. Ashleigh Dennis Silas is the vice president of mental health and Wellness at CHRIS 180, a school-based mental health care provider in the Atlanta area. Silas says in the long term, there are skills students need to learn to handle grief, which may never go away.
Ashleigh Dennis Silas: How to cope with the different things that they're dealing with, and then also going to extend that skill set to the families.
Ellen Eldridge: David Schonfeld began teaching these skills in New York City schools after 9/11. Later, he would help respond to the Parkland shooting in Florida, among others. He says he didn't think he'd still be doing the work today or that it would become his career.
David Schonfeld: And then I finally concluded I was wrong and that it really was something that I don't anticipate will end sometime during my natural lifespan.
Ellen Eldridge: Schonfeld says he still has hope one day that might change. Students at Apalachee High School will return full time in mid-October. For GPB News, I'm Ellen Eldridge.
Story 4:
Peter Biello: Former President Donald Trump held a rally in Savannah today, his first campaign appearance in Georgia since early August. GPB's Benjamin Payne reports.
Benjamin Payne: Trump began by overstating the size of the crowd at Savannah's Johnny Mercer Theater, falsely saying it was 5,000 to 6,000 people when in fact, it was a capacity crowd of about 2,500. The focus of Trump's remarks was his economic agenda, including raising tariffs on U.S. imports and lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% for companies that make their products solely in the U.S.
Donald Trump: With a world-class port and a world-class workforce, the city will soon become one of the premier export hubs anywhere on Earth, tripling and quadrupling traffic as your power will lead an American manufacturing boom.
Benjamin Payne: Trump criticized the expansion of electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Hyundai is building a massive $7.6 billion EV plant in Bryan County near Savannah. For GPB News, I'm Benjamin Payne in Savannah.
Story 5:
Peter Biello: The Georgia Teamsters endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. The Black Caucus of Teamsters also has endorsed Harris. Black Caucus Chairman James Curbeam says he believes her policies and background best represent his interests.
James Curbeam: Vice President Harris is the only candidate that actually grew up in the middle class, and her agenda is the only one that's focused on building the working families again. There are significant impacts across Georgia. We're looking at hurricane force winds within a 50 mile radius of I-75 south of Macon. And then tropical storm force winds, possibly statewide. If you remember, back in the early 90s, a Hurricane Opal, we had those significant wind events all the way up into the North Georgia mountains. This is another opportunity to experience that. We fully anticipate widespread power outages from a significant number of downed trees and power lines all throughout the state. Rainfall totals are expected to be 4 to 8in statewide, with higher totals possible in the north Georgia mountains, leading to the threat of flash flooding. [00:00:00][0.0]
Peter Biello: Meanwhile, the National Teamsters, one of the largest labor unions in the country, has not endorsed either major party candidate.
Story 6:
Peter Biello: The Georgia State Election Board yesterday approved an investigation into why challenges to voter rolls were denied in eight different Georgia counties. GPB's Grant Blankenship has more.
Grant Blankenship: The State Election Board launched the investigation after it heard complaints about thousands of failed challenges in the core metro Atlanta counties, plus Bibb, Jackson and Athens-Clarke counties. Bibb County GOP chair David Sumrall told the board the bulk of his May challenges were denied because while they complied with state law, they violated federal law.
David Sumrall: The board is really, I think, in Bibb county waiting for somebody — a judge or this board — to tell them what constitutes a valid challenge and whether the federal law trumps the state law. If so, then our state law is virtually worthless.
Grant Blankenship: The State Election Board has invited but cannot compel local officials to explain their actions at their next meeting, which comes on the 8th of October — after the start of early voting. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.
Story 7:
Peter Biello: Zoo Atlanta's last four giant pandas will be moved to China next month as its 25-year agreement with the country comes to an end. Atlanta received the first two pandas from China in 1999 as part of a loan agreement. The zoo's president and CEO says it's been the zoo's privilege to be able to share the pandas with the city for the past 25 years. The facility plans a Panda Palooza event on Oct. 5 to wish the animals farewell.
Story 8:
Peter Biello: The chief operating officer of Atlanta's 1996 Olympic Games has died. Friends of A.D. Frazier confirmed his death yesterday. Frazier served as the Atlanta Games' No. 2. He later served as president of the Atlanta-based investment management firm Invesco. A.D. Frazier was 80 years old.
Story 9:
Peter Biello: And in baseball, the Braves and their rivals, the New York Mets, open a high-stakes three-game series at Truist Park tonight. The Braves are one and a half games out of the wild card behind the Diamondbacks. Beating the Mets twice would even their records, and if the Braves sweep the Mets and stay hot through the series with Kansas City this weekend — and the Mets continue to lose — the Braves will find a place in the postseason schedule. Rookie Spencer Schwellenbach is scheduled to start tonight against the Mets' Luis Severino.
Peter Biello: And that's a wrap on this edition of Georgia Today. Thank you so much for listening. Because you value the service — because it's part of your routine, perhaps — we ask you to support it with a gift because everything that you hear on GPB, whether it's a podcast or something on the radio, is made possible by people like you. So choose an amount and make a contribution at GPB.org, and thanks so much. Remember, you can always check out the latest news at GPB.org/news. And if you subscribe to this podcast, we will pop up in your podcast feed automatically tomorrow afternoon. If you've got feedback or a story idea we should know about. Send it to us 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
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