Power Returns to Freeport as Hurricane Cleanup Continues
Electricity has mostly been restored to Freeport a week after Hurricane Isaias, and the Salvation Army is serving hot meals to residents whose refrigerated food spoiled during the long outage.
Life is beginning to return to normal for the Walton County residents hit hardest by the storm, but the recovery is far from finished. Power is back for most of the city, and there is still a lot of cleanup left to do — downed limbs, yard debris and the smaller wreckage that lingers after the big work is done.
The outage left a quieter kind of damage behind. With electricity off for days, everything in the refrigerator spoiled, leaving families without food at home. That is where the Salvation Army has stepped in, handing out meals to people still working to get back on their feet.
“These people are coming here. They have no means of making a meal. Their power is out. They can’t cook. They have their food going bad in the refrigerators the last couple of days. We’ve been serving a hot meal, pulled pork and vegetables, and they’re just so thankful to have a hot meal,” Salvation Army employee Kevin Kruluts said.
For residents, the meal line is one part help and one part relief. “People suffered a lot. Mostly about power lines and deep freezers, refrigerators. The damage was pretty bad, but everybody’s helping and everything is coming along,” resident William McLean said.
While power has returned for most people, signs of the storm are still visible around town. “They’re still cleaning up small stuff in the yard, but they got the big stuff mostly,” Kruluts said. Most of the residents he sees are trying to finish the cleanup work first, then focus on replacing what they lost.
The milestone comes as the recovery effort pushes ahead across the county. Curbside storm debris pickup began Wednesday across Walton County, with crews facing an estimated 250,000 cubic yards of limbs and wreckage, and the Salvation Army has been serving meals at sites around Freeport since earlier this week. For a city that spent days in the dark, the lights coming back on is the clearest sign yet that the recovery is moving.
Originally reported by MyPanhandle (WMBB). Image: MyPanhandle (WMBB).
