ADRIAN, Ga. — Some small towns, like Adrian in Johnson County, were hit hard by Helene.
Without a big city budget, Adrian's struggling to pay for repairs. Mayor Wynola Smith said in over 60 years, she's never seen anything close to the damage done.
"It's unbelievable," she said. "It lets you know just what kind of storm we had that came through this little city."
Just getting into her neighborhood was a challenge - the road was blocked by trees and power lines, so people have to drive off the road.
The rest of the town doesn't look much better. Smith said they have a large senior citizen population in town, and their budget isn't big enough to help everybody.
"Our budget's a few hundred-thousand dollars," Smith said. "We don't have a million-dollar budget. And if we did, that's money that we project to use for like different things as far as the city is concerned."
One of their biggest priorities right now is finding a special generator to get their water supply back up and running. That's stressful enough, but Smith's also worried about how they're going to pay for it.
"We got to try to do what we need to do, and worry about how we're going to pay for it later," she said. "How we're going to continue to pay our bills."
As of Monday afternoon, Smith said the entire town hasn't had their power restored.
One family in Adrian with three children, including a toddler, had a sleeping bag set up in their front yard where they were sleeping because it's too hot inside without air conditioning.
Michelle Love lives down the road from city hall, and said a lot of their food has gone bad, but they're doing the best they can to feed their neighbors.
"We're cooking on this griddle, we only have the one tank of gas. So when it runs out, we'll be out of that," Love said.
With no grocery store in town, Smith's reached out to agencies like the Red Cross for help, but she hasn't heard back yet. Smith and Love are asking everybody to keep looking out for each other as the week goes on.
"Never seen anything like it," Love said. "I've been through many, many, many hurricanes in Florida. This is just total devastation."
It's hard for small towns that already had few resources. But now, it's even harder in Adrian, as they navigate forward with even less.
Smith is asking everyone to conserve water for now, and said there is a boil water advisory in effect.
She said that Georgia Power estimates the town could have power back on Wednesday, Oct. 2.
In the meantime, she's asking anyone who can help them to contact her.