SAVANNAH, Ga. (WSAV) — The Small Business Administration (SBA) is stepping in to offer small business owners a hand in the wake of Hurricane Helene by opening up business recovery centers in affected communities.
"I really feel like my first couple weeks open; I wasn't running a business. I was managing crises," Becca Goossen, owner of Savannah grocery store GoodFortune, said.
Goossen opened up GoodFortune just a couple of months ago, but things haven't exactly gone to plan since then.
"We opened up on a Friday, and by Sunday, we were sandbagging, getting ready for Hurricane Debbie, "Goossen said. "So, technically, my first week being open, I was closed. We had some infrastructure problems here. We had a pipe burst that filled our entire store up with water and also filled up the neighboring two businesses. Then, the following weekend after that was Hurricane Helene."
GoodFortune has lost power more than once since it opened.
"Having a cooler go out for four to five hours renders those products unusable based on food-borne illnesses or the spread of viruses," Goossen said.
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"My business is pretty new," she continued. "So, we weren't even fully stocked but still having multiple inventory losses of $2,000-$5,000 and having a repetition of that happening to me in the course of a month was a pretty catastrophic loss."
She said her community and fellow business owners helped her through the tough times, though.
"I just feel like there's a ton of community support and a lot of love," Goossen said.
However, for those who may not have been as lucky and suffered similar losses, there's an option to take out a loan from the SBA, something you can do in person now in Savannah.
"Small businesses are the backbone of our economy, and every business that suffers is an impact to that community in particular," Angel Class with the SBA Office of Disaster Recovery and Assistance, said.
SBA staff said that they encourage people to come to the office, even if they're unsure about their options.
"We're going to be in every place that is needed," Class said. "So, we try to look for the places that were really impacted by the hurricane, whether it was Debbie, whether it was Helene, if that area was impacted, we wanna be there. We wanna open up a door so we can be able to help them."
Any business that's located in one of the counties declared under the federal disaster declaration, as well as several other neighboring counties, is eligible to apply for a SBA loan.
The two centers currently open in our area are at the Savannah Entrepreneurial Center and the Eastern Heights Baptist Church in Statesboro.