(CNN) — Nineteen long days have passed since Susie Stevenson’s home lost power after Hurricane Helene cut through the southeastern United States late last month, leaving hundreds of people dead and countless communities devastated.
Stevenson is one of thousands of residents in south Georgia who are still without power following Helene. There are just over 2,000 customers reporting outages where she lives in Jeff Davis County as of Tuesday morning, according to PowerOutages.com. Several nearby counties are also reporting outages, including Coffee County, where another 2,000 customers are in the dark.
“We were so unprepared for this storm,” Stevenson, who lives in Hazlehurst, told CNN. “We didn’t get any kind of evacuation warnings or shelter in place.”
Hurricane and tropical storm warnings from the National Weather Service were in place across Georgia when Helene struck the state. Hazlehurst saw the worst impacts on September 27.
In her part of Georgia, about 100 miles west of Savannah, the streets are littered with downed trees, fallen power lines and other debris.
But Stevenson says nobody there knew they were in the storm’s direct path until the last minute. In 2017, she went five days without power when Hurricane Irma caused damage in Georgia, and that was long enough, she said.
Leslie Breedlove also lives in Hazlehurst, which is the county seat, and she says she is getting by on food donations and by taking showers and washing her clothes at other people’s houses.
“The goodness of others is what has gotten us through,” Stevenson told CNN on Monday. “Just when I wonder where I’m going to wash clothes, I get a call this morning telling me to come shower, wash clothes, and eat tonight.”
The generator Stevenson uses to power parts of her home is costing her a pretty penny as well.
“I finally got a refrigerator hooked to it, but it costs almost $20 a day just for the generator,” Stevenson said.
“Someone should have done something – the county or city – there should have been a contingency plan in place,” she added.
CNN has reached out to officials in Hazlehurst and Jeff Davis County for their response.
Satilla REMC, Stevenson’s power company, is working to restore power to its customers, the cooperative told CNN in an email Tuesday morning.
“These outages are the direct result of the tree and wind damage to Satilla [REMC]’s distribution system that we experienced due to Hurricane Helene,” said Jim Tucker, a Satilla REMC spokesperson. “We have a workforce of almost 2,000 working on repairs across our distribution system.”
The bulk of their workforce over the past two weeks has been stationed in Jeff Davis and neighboring counties, Tucker said. Approximately 480 of those workers are making repairs in Jeff Davis alone, he added.
“Along the way, we have had to [replace] hundreds of broken poles and cross arms and [have] picked up thousands of miles of wire that was on the ground,” Tucker said.
Crews have struggled to access hard hit areas due to this damage, according to Tucker, further slowing the restoration process.
“In many cases we have had to spend hours clearing fallen trees and other storm related debris before we can even begin to repair the power lines,” he said.
The estimated date for restoration in Jeff Davis County is October 20, Tucker said.
Breedlove says she is thankful for the line workers but she told CNN she is worried restoring the power will take even longer than forecast.
“We are a small town, but we’re strong with one another and helping one another,” Breedlove said.
Stevenson said FEMA officials are coming to her property on Tuesday for an inspection, and she hopes they can offer some solutions.
“We need a lot of help in our area,” Stevenson said. “I know other places are having hard times, too. I pray they also get as much help as they can.”
CNN’s Monica Garrett contributed to this report.
