The letter was timestamped and ready to serve by 8:00 a.m. if buses were blocked. We also prepared a formal complaint to the county emergency management agency, not a phone call, a written complaint, citing section 14 and requesting that the agency exercise its authority under the Georgia Emergency Management Act to designate the east entrance as a public safety access corridor.
Walt, with his county background, knew the right office and the right person, Deputy Director Faye Holbrook, who had worked Georgia storm response for eighteen years and did not, Walt assured us, have patience for obstructions. During a declared state of emergency, the Georgia Emergency Management Act, O.C.G.A. section 38-3-1 et seq., grants county emergency management agencies authority to compel access to privately controlled property when it impedes emergency operations. This overrides HOA authority entirely.
Layer two, the documentation net. Braddock had a GoPro he used for job site documentation. We mounted it on a magnetic base that could stick to any vehicle. Walt had a dashcam. I had my phone set up to record continuously using the extended video function. Connie, and this is why I love Connie, had already texted three neighbors asking them to document anything they witnessed at the east entrance with their own phones starting at 7:00 a.m. Whatever happened tomorrow, it would be filmed from at least five angles.
Layer three, the media thread. I had been in contact quietly with a reporter at the Coastal Georgia Ledger named Price Dunbar, who had been following the HOA story in a general way since I’d given him a heads-up about the conflict of interest complaint in February. I texted Price at midnight. If buses get blocked during the evac tomorrow, I’ll call you first. He texted back in forty seconds. I’ll have my camera ready.
Layer four, the National Guard connection. This one was mine alone, and it came from a very specific part of my past. During my Army Corps work, I had spent eighteen months coordinating with the Georgia Army National Guard on infrastructure assessment after Hurricane Michael in 2018. My counterpart then was a man named Major Gerald Oats, now Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Oats, stationed at Fort Stewart, who was currently, as I knew from his LinkedIn update two months ago, serving as operations coordinator for the guard’s storm response mobilization.
I called Gerald at 2:00 a.m. He picked up on the third ring, which tells you everything about what the guard’s schedule looks like before a Category 3. “Dex, you’re in Pelican Cove?” “I am, and I have an HOA president who has blocked bus access to an elementary school on a shared evacuation corridor. And I have the founding document that says she can’t do that during an emergency. I need to know if the county emergency management makes a formal access request, can the guard be part of the response team?”
Gerald was quiet for a moment. “If county emergency management is formally requesting support for an obstruction on a designated evacuation route, yes. We’re already mobilized. It doesn’t take much to redirect two soldiers in a staff car.” “Just the visual would do it,” I said. “Oh, I know,” Gerald said. There was something in his voice that sounded like professional satisfaction. “I’ve seen HOA people fold at a uniform. Get me the formal request from the county, and I’ll have someone there.”
I hung up and stood in the garage for a moment. Outside, the first wind gusts from Dolores’s outer bands were starting to move through the neighborhood. The pine trees at the end of Braddock’s driveway were beginning to sway, that slow ominous sweep, like the landscape clearing its throat before it shouts. “You think she’ll actually block the buses?” Braddock asked. I thought about Marlene’s chain on the door, her laminated badge, the way she’d smiled at my folder full of facts and said, moving on. “Yeah,” I said, “I do.” “Then we’re ready.” Connie poured the last of the coffee. It tasted like burnt ambition, and I meant that as a compliment.