Georgia forestry director says post-Helene recovery will take years; warns of fuel, market and planting bottlenecks

Director Sabo, director of the Georgia Forestry Commission, told the Natural Resources & Environment committee that recovery from Storm Helene will be long-term and complex, requiring years of cleanup, salvage work and replanting while communities remain at elevated fire risk.

"We really are an emergency response organization," Director Sabo said, describing the commission’s workforce and structure. He said the agency has 524 employees, about 400 of whom serve as emergency responders, and that last year the commission conducted "one of our best years ever" for prescribed fire with "a little over a million and a half acres." He said staff deployed to assist other states after major incidents but did not provide a clear, auditable figure for the total number of personnel deployed to other states in the transcript record.

Sabo told members the commission used 2,800 field plots immediately after the storm to map damage across nearly 8.9 million acres, and that teams cleared roughly 40,000 miles of roadways during response operations. He said up to 400 staff were involved in the immediate response, although the first few days after the storm involved only about 85 to 90 people on the ground.

The presentation emphasized two broad priorities: protection and forest management. On protection, Sabo described reopening existing firebreaks and roads in damaged counties and said building those lines would continue for years. "We're going to be doing fire breaks in the road for probably the next couple years," he said. He highlighted radio interoperability improvements (Harris radios) and the use of all-hazards incident management teams to provide logistics, safety officers and county liaisons during emergencies.

On forest management, Sabo warned of practical limits to salvage and reforestation: mill capacity and logger availability cannot keep pace with the volume of downed timber, seedling and planting contractor capacity is limited, and equipment built to fell standing trees is poorly suited to large volumes of downed timber. Drawing on previous storms, he told the committee that "10 to 20% of the timber is all that's going to be harvested" in similar events and that, "best case scenario, 80% of the timber is going to lay on the ground and rot." That estimate was presented as the commission’s expectation based on past experience, not a formal projection tied to a specific acreage figure in the transcript.

Sabo described the commission’s role as a technical advisor to federal programs. "In the Emergency Forest Restoration Program, although it's a program through FSA, what many don't realize is we are the technical advisors to that," he said, encouraging landowners to sign up with the Farm Service Agency so the commission can provide post-enrollment technical help.

Committee members asked about prioritization and timelines for assistance. Representative Petrie pressed the commission on retention and pay for certified firefighting staff, suggesting the state consider credential pay to retain experts. In response to a question about how applications for fuel-mitigation firebreaks were prioritized, Sabo said the program used a ranking system based on fuel loadings, proximity to schools and communities, and that when applications scored equally the commission processed them by application timestamp (first come, first served).

Sabo warned that the next several springs and summers could see elevated fire danger because of increased sunlight on the forest floor and large amounts of fuels on the ground, and said heavier pines and then hardwoods could present multi-year smoke and fire risks. He urged continued coordination with neighboring states and local emergency managers and said larger, heavier equipment will be needed in many impacted areas.

No formal committee votes or motions were recorded in the transcript. The presentation closed with Sabo taking questions from committee members.