15 hours Ago
Editor's note: The Aiken Standard is honoring people who responded to the challenge of dealing with Tropical Storm Helene. These individuals are the Aiken Standard's Persons of the Year for 2024. North Augusta’s Greeneway, “you never know how much people really and truly enjoy it until it’s actually shut down.
” A somewhat dreary Tuesday morning, the rain somewhere between letting up and starting anew, and Jason Sikes, superintendent of sanitation for the city of North Augusta, is talking Helene. From the first nudge he said he felt that late September morning to get to “the shop” on Claypit Road and deploy the heavy equipment, to the more recent and minutely nit-picky challenge: this same dreary Tuesday morning and a half-circle of piled receipts and other accounting is laid out on his office floor. 'We really were a lifeline for many of our neighbors': Area nonprofits came to rescue during Helene Sikes has been “integral” in the city’s coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a near “subject expert” with experience that runs a decade deep to the 2014 ice storm and with the renewal of a continuing education in 2017 and again during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
He “helped to develop the city’s strategy in accordance with FEMA requirements” and easily weighed “the city’s capabilities against the likelihood of reimbursement,” Jim Clifford, North Augusta city administrator, said. J.D.
McCauley, assistant city administrator, said Sikes is “well-versed” in FEMA and has a vast institutional knowledge in how cities and neighborhoods work. He’s “a good example of the cross section that’s all things North Augusta." FEMA chief in Augusta as city estimates Helene caused double the debris as the 2014 ice storm In his current role since 2019, Sikes has been with the city for 17 years, having started as a firefighter and then serving as a Public Safety officer.
He spent six months doing code enforcement before bumping over to sanitation — his background from Aiken Tech is in industrial maintenance — and managing the city’s recycling facility. “Overall, a wealth of knowledge,” said James Sutton, director of Public Services and Sikes’ direct supervisor. “A very strong work ethic, very consistent in his efforts.
He’s someone you can always count on to get the job done.” Sutton — and both Clifford and McCauley — credited Sikes with knowing his men and knowing his equipment such that his crews have often been ahead of schedule. Though the hardest hit area of all South Carolina, per multiple reports, North Augusta is still tracking end of January for a near full cleanup from Helene.
North Augusta to see different rates of Helene cleanup, even within a single neighborhood North Augusta's city crews work to clear storm debris from the roadways. Others have credited Sikes with knowing his men and knowing his equipment such that his crews have often been ahead of schedule. Sikes said many of his men have, like him, been with the city for a decade or more, and their own experience with the ice storm has fed into that quick recovery.
“We already knew coming into it that our utility guys would run diesel operations, and we would have Property Maintenance and Streets and Drains to handle saw work; Sanitation would handle the actual hauling of debris and material,” he said. Still, “You can always learn something” from a natural disaster, he said. This time, it was “expect the unexpected.
” Sikes met with an ambulance running code that morning, just as the trees began to fall, and “the next thing I see a transformer swinging”; he heard the dispatch for a man trapped under a tree in Hammond Hills. “I thought it was going to be just as bad as the ice storm. But once you actually rode through Hammond Hills and you actually physically got out there — it was a lot worse.
” The crisis phase now past, attention is on debris . “The biggest is just getting the Greeneway up,” Sikes laughed. The city pursued the $1 million contract with R&R Tree Service it had placed on standby early on.
Administrator Clifford said it's helped push earlier cleanup of the trail without taking away from the crews working the roadways. There's need for more specialized equipment, "more saw guys," on the Greeneway, Sikes said, detailing a scene akin to what the roads had in those first days after Helene. “Everything is crisscrossing; it's all over,” he said.
It's already sawed up on the roadways, but the Greeneway, “basically the whole of the tree — " Sikes makes shwooooshing sound. “— is on the Greeneway.”.
