Rescue teams have completed search for missing 2-year-old Albany boy

ALBANY — The search for missing 2-year-old Detrez Green has been completed after more than five days, according to Dougherty County Emergency Management Agency officials.uring the daily Albany-Dougherty County storms news conference, EMA Director Ron Rowe said search and rescue efforts to locate the youngster, who disappeared near the Piney Wood Estates mobile home park during the Jan. 22 tornado that raged through east Albany into Worth County, have been completed and the matter has been turned back over to the Dougherty County Police Department.

“We’ve had over 200 personnel here in town (including Georgia Search and Rescue teams) working hours and hours doing a search and rescue operation,” said Rowe. “We’ve cleared all three areas — A, B, and C divisions — that we gridded off. We have completed this, and we’ve officially ended our search for the missing child.

“We have completed our mission.”

Rowe said that over the course of four days, search and rescue personnel cleared an area of 150 yards around the location down to the dirt, and utilized dive teams to search a nearby pond in efforts to find the child.

“When we brought in the Georgia Search and Rescue Team, our portion of this is to search every possible place we can and exhaust all those resources and make a determination of where the missing person may be,” he said. “We have had over 200 people in the area. We have cleared an area to ground level and below at least 150 yards away from the site. We’ve drained a pond to where you could walk through it. We have put dive teams in other sections of it. We have been a mile and a half downstream. We have been hundreds of yards past this pond area. We’ve literally cleared the ground to dirt.

“It is in our best, expert judgment that in this area, the missing person is not there at this time.”

With search and rescue efforts now complete, Dougherty County Police Chief Jackie Battle said the matter will be handled as a missing person case and that the police department will continue its investigation.

“We’ll follow our protocol that we use for a missing person case,” said Battle. “We’ll simply ask the public for any information that is given to us and put all of our information together that we have.

“The information we were given is that the child was lost in the storm and, of course, we called in search and rescue and, as you’ve heard, they’ve exhausted everything.”

Battle said interviews have been conducted and are ongoing, but she would not comment on how many interviews have been completed or who was interviewed.

She added that there still was no photograph of the 2-year-old boy available.

With emergency search and rescue efforts complete, Rowe said EMA officials are transitioning from the “mitigation stage to the recovery stage.” One of the top priorities is discovering the many needs of residents who were impacted by the storm.

“Our primary objective has changed now to the recovery phase,” said Rowe. “We want to identify the immediate and ongoing needs of our community.

“Anyone in our community that knows of any needs that are not being addressed, please call our non-emergency numbers in our Emergency Operations Center so we can know these needs and try to address them as we go forward.”

Those contact numbers are (229) 483-6226, (229) 483-6227 or (229) 483-6228.

Although there are still four shelters open at the present time, Rowe said he was aware of several other locations where displaced persons are being cared for, and suspects there are more. He said EMA officials are reaching out to the community to locate those places and to provide assistance for those being sheltered.

“We know that there are other places in our community that are helping hurt members of our community,” he said. “Going back to the needs of our community, people that are in these places they need to let us know where they are, let us know the needs so we can help address them.

“There are several places we have been told, and like any other report we’ll investigate it until it’s either accurate or inaccurate information. We’ve been told there are other places in town that have some of our citizens in them that need help, but we don’t know the locations. We’re trying our best through community support. Let us know where they are so we can help these people, whatever it is.”

Further assistance to the community is also coming from the local Department of Family and Children’s Services, the local health department, and from FEMA officials, said Rowe.

“We’re going to continue to work with our FEMA representatives that are here in town for preregistration of possible FEMA assistance and going forward,” he said. “As you also know, for our Jan. 2 storm we were also declared for individual assistance and public assistance. The Jan. 22 storm, we have been declared federally for individual assistance at this time.

“You should be seeing several FEMA representatives in the community going door to door wanting to register people for possible assistance.” Registration with FEMA also may be done at the website disasterassistance.gov.

While Rowe said a lot of progress has been made, including the restoration of power to more than 3,250 Albany Utilities customers and more Georgia Power clients, help is still needed throughout the community. He is urging volunteers to continue to pledge their support.

“We’ve had a tremendous outpouring of volunteers coming to us as we’ve had for the whole month, and we still need volunteers to come forward,” the EMA chief said. “This is going to be a long recovery process. There’s a tremendous amount of damage between both storms. It’s going to take us a long time to do this, but we will do it collectively and together we’ll make a big change.”

Rowe advised that anyone interested in volunteering needs to visit the volunteer resource center that has been set up at 700 E. Oglethorpe Blvd. Rowe said staff there will ask questions of volunteers to ascertain skill sets and will then give out volunteer assignments.

“We’ll ask some questions about your skill sets and what you bring and we’ll be able to point you in the right direction where you can do the most good for our community,” Rowe said. “We have areas, what we call green areas, that just about anyone can go in and assist with the cleanup process. Then we also have, if you want to say, red areas, that still could be some dangerous areas that we just can’t put everyone in those areas.

“We don’t want to put anyone in danger. So we will categorize based on skill set, experience, etc. and be able to go into areas where we can do the most good with the most amount of effort. So, we’re not duplicating efforts and we’re call coming together as one and not having a shotgun approach.”

In addition to volunteers, Rowe said displaced residents are still in need of several items and donation sites have been established at 107 and 109 Front Street. Items needed are canned goods, non-perishable food items, new and “gently used” baby items, bedding and toiletries. Rowe also added that those donation sites are not equipped to receive any monetary donations.

“We are not accepting cash donations at these locations,” he said. “There have been, again, several places set up for anyone who would like to donate cash money.”

There are several ways for individuals to donate money including making donations through:

— United Way of Southwest Georgia, which can be made at www.unitedwayswga.org/help or by calling (229) 883-6700;

— Sherwood Baptist Church, which can be made at www.sherwoodbaptist.net/give, select “Help Albany” or via check sent to 2201 Whispering Pines Road, Albany, Ga. 31707, please write #HelpAlbany in the memo line;

— Mission:Change, by texting GIVE to (229) 469-8069 or through PayPal.me/MissionChange;

— The Albany Herald at www.gofundme.com/recover-rebuild-renew-albany-ga.

“It’s unbelievable what these (volunteers and relief crews) have done,” said Rowe. “We’ve had thousands of people in our community that have come forth and put forth a tremendous amount of effort in any way they can.

“We have emergency responder/municipal government-type team that is doing what we’re trained to do and we could not be more proud of those employees and team members. We also have a public side too that has come forth and volunteered and they have put countless hours and resources into this.

“There’s no words to say how grateful we are first of all. Or how proud we are of all of Albany and Dougherty County.”