It has been just more than two months since Hurricane Helene tore through the Gulf states like a runaway freight train, leaving a path of death and destruction in its wake.

This includes my hometown of Valdosta, Ga., the place I have called home my entire life, a community in which I have proudly served as mayor-pro tem, a city councilman, a paramedic, and now a state representative. It’s where my wife and I raised our four children. Everyone here is a neighbor and a friend.

As I drive down litter-strewn streets, the same streets my children traveled by bicycle not long ago, I am aghast at the width and breadth of the destruction. Homes and buildings that have stood for generations were reduced to rubble; natural beauty as old as time itself now bears deep and enduring scars. And meanwhile, my neighbors, my friends, sift through the wreckage in an attempt to reclaim a piece of their shattered lives.

We all pitch in and do what we can. We are gutting homes, delivering water and generators and providing meals to those who’ve lost everything.

But this is not enough — it’s a Band-Aid on a severed limb, a bit of salve on a third-degree burn. Without critical........

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