Officials in south Georgia Monday pleaded with the Trump administration for help as they struggled to pick up the pieces from back-to-back violent storms.
Fifteen people were confirmed dead across four counties in the southern reaches of the state. and the number is expected to rise as emergency workers pick through acres of trailer parks and homes flattened by the weekend tornado.
For the victims, Monday was a day to regroup with family, tally their losses and process the scenes they survived. Authorities also began the grim task of identifying the dead.
In Dougherty County, where four people died, officials expressed frustration and said they felt abandoned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The Albany area was still recovering from a devastating tornado Jan. 2 that caused more than $50 million in damage when they were hit early Sunday with by the storm.
"We've been begging for help from FEMA (since Jan. 2) _ the reason the federal government exists," County Chairman Christopher S. Cohilas said. "This community was crippled. Our families have been hurting, needing help for some time."
Cohilas called on President Donald Trump to help cut the "bureaucratic red tape" and help get some "damn boots on the ground."
While Cohilas singled out the federal government, it is state officials who must make first make a disaster declaration, clearing the way for federal assistance. Soon after Cohilas' comments, Gov. Nathan Deal's office announced that nine more counties had been declared disaster areas. One of them was Dougherty County.
"The state is making all of our resources available," Deal said at a news conference.
Trump called Deal Sunday to offer assistance. In an email to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a FEMA spokesman said the agency is working on the Jan. 9, assistance request from the Albany area to deal with the first round of storms that hit the town earlier in the month. month. The agency also did initial damage assessments across Dougherty County Monday, including aerial observation, the spokesman wrote.
Additionally, the state has requested that FEMA work with state emergency officials to do federal and state preliminary damage assessments to help with individual and public assistance requests. A FEMA liaison officer is working with responders at the emergency operations center.
The agency's website said it has an interim director, Robert Fenton. Trump has yet to name someone to lead the agency, which leads disaster response.
In Albany, the latest tornado ravaged the Big Pines Estates mobile home park.
"It looks like God took half the mobile home park and threw it across the road into the woods," Cohilas said. County emergency management director Ron Rowe said local resources are simply exhausted _ and they have been for weeks.
"There are only a couple areas of our county that have not been affected by the tornadoes," Rowe said.
Further southeast in Cook County, seven people died in the Sunrise Acres Trailer Park. Another 23 people were injured but authorities said they don't expect to find any more victims.
Mark Wool, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said 32 structures were flattened in the trailer park.
"Entirely blown away," he said.
Local officials opened Sunrise Acres to the media Monday, offering a closer look at the devastation of homes, cars and much else. The place has not yet been reopened to people who lived there. Trailers were crushed and twisted and ripped apart with pieces of tin thrown everywhere. Cars were battered.
Auriel Holton, 25, could not shake the sight of the dead body she saw outside her trailer.
"It keeps playing in my head," she said. "I don't want to see it."
She and her 8-month-old daughter were huddled in their bedroom as the tornado shook the trailer violently. In the end, the bedroom was just about the only room that wasn't destroyed, she said.
She didn't know what to do Monday so she went to her job cleaning at the Days Inn. Having lost so much she didn't want to lose her job, too.
James Woods got out before the tornado destroyed his trailer and was able to get a quick look at it afterward
"Rubbish," he said. "It's like a bomb was dropped. Half my trailer was blown out. "
He was in the local restaurant Sweet T's Smokehouse where owner Theresa Key was feeding victims and first responders free.
"It's not about making money today," she said.
Woods was talking with Chris Newbern, a volunteer firefighter who responded to the scene.
"We were able to pull three children out from under a trailer," he said.
They were one toddler and two elementary school age kids, and they were alive.
"You're OK, you're OK," he kept telling them. They were crying.
"I don't think they knew what was happening. It was dark," he said.He was struggling to make sense of it all.
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(Rosalind Bentley and Aaron Gould Sheinin contributed to this report.)
