Jeff Davis has lived off Shad Road in Chatham County for more than 50 years, and his home backs up near the Ogeechee River waterfront. Throughout the years he has seen water levels rise and recede. This long-timer of Chatham’s backwoods knows what river flooding looks like.
When Chatham Emergency Management Agency (CEMA) alerts pinged his phone late last week, Davis made his preparations by moving things to higher ground. They were moved to a height that would typically be safe from high flood levels.
But the roll of water that came through last weekend was nothing he had seen before.
“My house was prepared for (flooding), but not this high,” Davis said.
Shad Road is a hidden dirt path that intersects with Middle Landing Road, which is off Fort Argyle Road near Bloomingdale. There are some 20 homes in the wooded neighborhood that stretches to the Ogeechee, and Sunday’s flood waters on Middle Landing Road were so high mailboxes were submerged.
As local officials flocked to larger neighborhood developments around the region in emergency response, there were no signs of command posts or municipal vehicles once most residents made it out. On a recent visit it was just the community, taking care of each other with their campers, generators, boats and kayaks ― the only vessels to reach homes in the neighborhood.
“I ain’t seen nobody (from local governments),” Davis said.
Inside a home, flooding rears its impacts
One of Middle Landing Road’s newest residents is Rogelio Dehoyos, who four years ago planted roots with a mobile home halfway down the road. Since, Dehoyos saved up money to build out a brick front porch and add a full living room.
One neighborhood friend, who would frequently travel down Middle Landing to fish on the Ogeechee, said he would frequently see Dehoyos and friends working on the house.
Flooding Sunday was so high that water on the front porch was up to his shins. Water inside his bedroom and across his kitchen floor was a few inches high, and that was after some water had receded, Dehoyos said.
“Now, I have to start over again,” Dehoyos said.
Dehoyos lives in the house with his wife, and the two stayed as flooding started until it reached about a foot and a half. The water reached as high as about five feet, he said, to the point it covered his chain-link fence almost entirely.
When they returned to the house, traveling through floodwaters in kayaks, his wife broke down in tears, Dehoyos said. While he knows repairing damaged parts of his home will be a challenge, Dehoyos maintained perspective.
“The good thing is we are good anyway,” Dehoyos said. “The material things come and go, so maybe we can start again.”
Response from first responders
Chatham County Fire Department responded to the Middle Landing Road area after receiving a request for water rescue. The department deployed “water rescue swimmers” to the site, said Chatham County Chairman Chester Ellis at a Thursday press conference.
Christy Armstrong, who is close with resident Lloyd Kipf, made the call when she saw the high-water levels and knew Kipf was still at home. Kipf is Davis’s neighbor, and the two live deep in the neighborhood, closer to the river.
Kipf said he came to his door after knocks and found fire rescuers in water up to their chests at the door. Soon Davis came by with his boat and carried Kipf and his dog to dry land.
“When we got back up here, there were all kinds of fire trucks and everything,” Kipf said from dry land.
Ellis said during the press conference that Chatham Fire made their own rescues that totaled five children and two adults. It was that same day Dehoyos said first responders knocked on his door and advised him to leave.
By Friday afternoon, a swath of the community transported what they could salvage to the banks. A group of men were gathered around boats, firing up a generator for Kipf’s camper and fellowshipping over beverages. The makeshift community was just beyond the corner store at Fort Argyle Road and Middle Landing Road.
Still, people like Davis had to leave things behind. For him it was a 1971 Oldsmobile Cutlass purchased new by his father that year, a 2023 Harley Davidson three-wheeler and a Jeep.
“Everything I got is underwater,” Davis said.
Evan Lassetter is the city and county reporter and Richard Burkhardt is the visual journalist for the Savannah Morning News.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: This Chatham community is flooded, yet it gets little attention
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