DONALSONVILLE, Georgia — Driving into Donalsonville, everything is off.

Entire forests lean at a 45-degree angle. Some are completely leveled, as if flattened by some enormous bomb.

Street signs lie flat on their face along U.S. Highway 84 leading into the rural Georgia town near the Florida-Alabama line.

More than a month after Hurricane Michael devastated the southwest corner of the state and the Florida panhandle, piles of rubble and debris still litter the community.

Signs of the storm can be seen down any neighborhood street.

Blue tarps covering roofs are a typical sighting here. They speckle the landscape like a strange case of chickenpox.

But these homes are some of the lucky ones.

Many houses had a tree or two collapse on the roof or were completely blown over by winds that in some places reached speeds of 115 miles per hour.

Crews of men wearing reflective vests work around the clock to remove the endless piles of debris in an attempt to return this badly struck city to some semblance of normalcy.

The truth is that even after all the debris is gone, the trees and street signs are righted and the homes no longer have blue tarps keeping out the rain, the people in this city will feel the effects of Hurricane Michael for generations.

The scars of losing everything are not so easily fixed.

When Tragedy Struck

Michelle Trim and her family lived in a single-wide trailer near Lake Seminole, which sits at the border of Georgia and Florida.

As far as evacuation, the Trim family had a limited amount of options available to them, so they decided to weather out the storm at home.

Michelle said they didn’t prepare much because every time they hear a hurricane is coming, it never actually hits.

On Wednesday, Oct. 10, Hurricane Michael was a rare exception.

By the time Michelle and her husband, Michael Trim Jr., heard they were in the direct path of the storm, it was too late to leave.

“We lost power around 1 p.m., but we still had daylight, so that wasn’t too bad,” Michelle said. “The tragic part happened a few hours later.”

They were huddled together in the living room when her husband heard a noise outside that sounded like a train.

He quickly sent Michelle and their two kids, Michael, 10, and Michaela, 9, to their daughter’s room on the other side of the trailer. That was the safest part of the house, Michelle said.

When her husband went to their bedroom on the opposite side to get something, she heard a deafening crash as two trees fell and split the trailer down the middle.

“I hollered for him, and I didn’t hear him for a minute,” Michelle said. “Then, I heard him holler and say, ‘Stay right there. I’ll be right there.’”

He crawled through the rubble and through the trees to get to them. He then had everyone put on their shoes and jackets to get ready to leave.

“He took the kids out first and had them hold onto a tree, so he could come back and get me,” she said. “As I was walking down the doorstep, a pretty big tree limb fell and hit my foot. I’m still recovering from that.”

Her in-laws lived next door in another single-wide trailer. During the worst part of the storm, the Trim family made their way to the neighboring trailer through a heavily wooded area while 100 mile-per-hour winds raged.

When they finally made it, they joined their grandma, grandpa and their five grandchildren, who all live in the trailer.

The adults put the seven kids under the dining room table for shelter. 

One by one, trees could be seen dropping all around them. 

Tammy Trim, Michelle’s mother-in-law, said the kids were petrified. All they could do was wait it out.

“We all just sat in here,” Tammy said. “We all prayed and after a while you could hear the wind dying down. My husband and son then went out and checked on his home, and when they came back, (my son) was in tears.”

“He said, ‘Mom, there are trees all over my house.’ I told him, ‘Y’all are alive, and that’s all that counts.’”

Five trees fell on Michelle’s home of 11 years. They lost everything, including irreplaceable items such as photos of her kids and their drawings from school.

“Those are the things I can’t replace,” Michelle said. “Everything else is just stuff. I can replace clothes and furniture. I’ll never get that stuff back.”

It took two days for the Trim family to clear a path to the road due to countless other fallen trees blocking them. 

When they finally managed to escape the rubble surrounding their homes, Michelle saw they weren’t the only ones who were hit hard by the storm.

A Ruined School Year

Michelle Trim is a special ed paraprofessional at Seminole Elementary School, where her son and daughter attend third and fourth grade.

Her children not only lost their home, but their classrooms as well.

Renea Pierce, principal of Seminole County Elementary, said the third- and fourth-grade wings of the school were the worst hit by Hurricane Michael and are still under construction.

Pierce said they lost 42 of the school’s 100 classrooms and offices. 

The football field was leveled, with the floodlights, scoreboard and bleachers all destroyed. Four home games had to be moved to rival schools.

The ceiling over the kindergarten hall was peeled back and completely flooded. Pierce said the water reached ankle height, and ceiling tiles were scattered everywhere.

She said no one anticipated this level of damage.

“We didn’t realize how bad it would be,” Pierce said. “We were able to save some of the desks, though.”

The miracle, she said, is they didn’t lose a single student to displacement. Students such as Michael and Michaela may have lost their home, but they are still able to attend the same school.

The Trim family is living with Michelle’s mother in a double-wide. They are looking for a new home, but it’ll be months before they can actually buy it and move it to where their old home was located, Michelle said.

“Christmas will be spent at Grandma’s house, but we’re together, and we’ll get through it,” she said. “We have a lot of stuff to replace, but I don’t want to ask people for things. I don’t want to be selfish because there’s people out there that are worse off than I am. There are people who don’t even have a place to stay.”

Trim, her family and so many others’ lives may not return to normalcy for quite some time. 

The elementary school, however, could soon return to its former glory due to community support and donations from across the state and nation.

With the help of Service Master Recovery Management, a national company that restores damaged property, the school was repaired and reopened. 

The Seminole County School System paid for Service Master to help with repairs. Brinson Register, superintendent, said the school system couldn’t have done it without help from Service Master.

“No way I could have done it myself,” Register said. “They came in here like an army and picked up every giblet on the ground. They’ve done so much.”

The superintendent said the elementary school was the hardest-hit school. The high school could have opened the following week after Michael, but the school system made the decision to delay opening school until everyone could come back together.

It took 17 days for the elementary school to reopen, though some parts of the building are still off limits and guarded by chain-link fences. 

Register said he thinks it could be April 2019 when things return to how they were pre-Michael.

Until then, the school year will most likely be tainted with displaced kids and teachers and a school under constant repair.

A Community Effort

Lowndes County was spared the worst of Hurricane Michael. 

LeAnne McCall, Lowndes High School principal, said she felt obligated to give back to one of the worst-struck communities in the state. 

She wasn’t the only one who wanted to help. When she reached out to the community of Lowndes County about donating to Donalsonville, the response was more than she expected.

“It truly was a community effort,” McCall said. “We heard from everybody. From educators to business leaders, people from all over the community reaching out and wanting to help.”

With help from Second Harvest of South Georgia, McCall contacted the Seminole County superintendent and that was the start of the Lowndes High fundraising campaign called #GiveYourOne. 

The thought behind the campaign was that if everyone in the school, roughly 3,300 people, donated $1, they could raise $3,300 for Seminole County School System.

“That quickly caught on like wildfire,” she said. “Our students answered the call, and so did our local businesses.”

Ace Electric reached out to McCall and said it would match everything up to $5,000 — and so that became the new goal at LHS.

By the end of the campaign, LHS managed to raise $13,000 and a trailer full of school supplies, all of which were donated to Seminole County School System.

McCall, along with James Corbett, an LHS career, technical and agricultural education teacher, packed up the school supplies in the back of a trailer and delivered them and the check to the elementary school Nov. 14.

“We were impacted by Irma last year,” McCall said. “When you go through that, when kids are worried about their safety, it really hits home. We encourage our kids to be a part of community service and give back, so we are trying to lead by example.”

Pierce said the Lowndes money and school supplies will make a real difference for the students and faculty at the school. 

Without donations, she said it would have been impossible for the school to reopen so soon after Michael. 

But there is still much work to be done at the school and in Donalsonville.

“We are continuing to get things from all over the country — it’s really amazing,” Pierce said. “We’re overwhelmed with gratitude. But for the generosity of others, we wouldn’t even be where we are now.”

For anyone interested in donating, contact the superintendent at register@seminole.k12.ga.us or contact the Seminole Chamber of Commerce at (229) 524-2588.

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256