Residents pick through the rubble of lost homes and scattered belongings in Hurricane Idalia’s wake

In this photo taken with a drone, debris from homes swept off their lots chokes a canal amid homes on stilts which re-main standing, in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., Aug. 31, one day after the passage of Hurricane Idalia. Photo: AP Pho-to/Rebecca Blackwell

Hurricanes and tropical storms are nothing new in the South, but the sheer magnitude of damage from Idalia shocked Desmond Roberson as he toured what as left of his Georgia neighborhood.

Roberson took a drive through Valdosta on August 31 with a friend to check out the damage after the storm, which first hit Florida as a hurricane and then weakened into a tropical storm as it made its way North, ripped through the town of 55,000.

On one street, he said, a tree had fallen on nearly every house. Roads remained blocked by tree trunks and downed power lines, and traffic lights were still blacked out at major intersections.

“It’s a maze,” Roberson said. “I had to turn around three times, just because roads were blocked off.”

The storm had 90 mph winds when it made a direct hit on Valdosta on August 30, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said.

“We’re fortunate this storm was a narrow one, and it was fast moving and didn’t sit on us,” Gov. Kemp told a news conference on August 31 in Atlanta. “But if you were in the path, it was devastating. And we’re responding that way.”

The storm first made landfall August 30 in Florida, where it razed homes and downed power poles…