“Overall, I’m really excited about this year’s team,” he said. “We have all kinds of new faces out there. I believe we have 13 new starters, so I’m really excited to watch this team grow. I really feel that if we stay healthy, we’ll have a chance to improve each game, and of course with 10 SEC games, it’s important for teams to improve throughout the year. I’m really looking forward to watching our guys play. I’m excited.”

Auburn hosts the Wildcats at 11 a.m. Sept. 26 at Jordan-Hare Stadium. The game will be televised on the SEC Network.

Gus Malzahn: Kentucky presents a challenge for Auburn’s opener from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

(Courtesy of Alabama NewsCenter)

Off to bed with a predicted peak of 85 mph winds, I was awakened by an ominous roar. With one peek through the high windows on our vibrating front door, it was obvious this was not a clone of Hurricane Danny from 1997 that dumped copious amounts of rain on the area but did not have the wind-damage potential of Sally.

As Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said, “Sally sucker-punched us.”

Sally made landfall in Gulf Shores in the early hours of September 16 as a strong Category 2 hurricane with winds clocked at 105 mph. A wind-speed detector on a nearby tower clocked a 121-mph gust.

However, Sally’s brutality was magnified by her crawling forward speed of 2 mph, which made the incessant winds seem to last forever. Like my friend Dwight Lores said, “A human can easily walk at 3 miles per hour. That’s why Sally did so much damage.”

When the first hint of sunrise allowed a minimal assessment through the aforementioned door, trees were down in every direction. Unlike many Baldwin County homes, thankfully ours was not damaged by any of the falling trees, but it was almost three days before we could even leave our driveway. On the fourth day, a utility crew from Warren County, Kentucky, restored our power, a remarkable feat considering the extent of the damage. All hail to a hot shower.

Of course, I prayed for the best for everybody on the Alabama coast, but I feared it was not going to be the outcome we wished, especially for those structures vulnerable to storm surge.

I soon got word through the little cell service available that the northern Gulf Coast’s premier fishing and educational pier, which opened in 2009 after Ivan razed the previous pier, had succumbed to the constant battering of Sally’s surge.

The section of pier closest to the end octagon was gone. The majority of the blowout deck panels were scattered all along the sugar-sand shoreline.

The good news is the new Lodge at Gulf State Park and nearby structures were relatively unscathed because those buildings were designed to withstand winds of up to 150 mph.

Chris Blankenship, Commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR), and Greg Lein, Alabama State Parks Director, were able to perform cursory assessments late last week.

“We had damage in places we didn’t expect, and in other places where I expected to have a lot of damage, it turned out to be not as bad,” said Commissioner Blankenship, who toured the area with Governor Kay Ivey last Friday. “The damage to the pier is the most obvious that everybody has seen on TV and had the most questions about. We were very surprised by the amount of damage to the pier. The cabins at Gulf State Park on Lake Shelby took a beating. I’m afraid a lot of them will be total losses. But I was pleasantly surprised by how the dune system held up on the beach. And the Lodge at Gulf State Park, which was built to fortified building standards, fared very well during the storm. The FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Administration) administrator was there, and we showed him the Lodge. He was very impressed with the resilience of the Lodge and how building to that standard has a big impact on the recovery.”

Commissioner Blankenship said divers are scheduled to assess the damage to the pier and determine the structural integrity of the remaining pilings.

“After that is finished, we will be able to make plans to get the pier reopened at least to the part where it broke off while we repair the entire structure back out to the octagon,” he said.

Director Lein said the campground at Gulf State Park suffered quite a bit of damage.

“It wasn’t until Friday that staff was able to access all of the park and assess the damage because of the water and downed trees,” Lein said. “A lot of the electrical distribution panels in the campground were impacted. That system will have to be assessed by an electrician to see what repairs are needed. Now that the conditions have improved, we’ve been able to clear all the campsite pads. All the modern buildings at the park appear to be okay. A couple of campers that were left on the site were tipped over by the wind. A few of the campers in the storage area were pushed together, but only one was overturned.”

The cabins and cottages on Lake Shelby highlighted how construction standards can make a big difference in potential damage.

“The cabins suffered major damage,” Lein said. “They lost portions of their roofs. Some of the walls collapsed. It appeared the wind got under the roofs in the porch areas and ripped them off. On the cottages, the roofs are intact. The older cabins had significant damage, but the modern cottages were not as affected.”

Lein said the good news about the pier is that the staff has been able to recover more than 200 of the deck panels that are designed to blow out to protect the infrastructure.

“They found some about 4 miles down the beach,” Lein said. “A couple were found in swimming pools down there. It’s amazing our crew has been able to recover so many panels. The pier will be inspected. If it’s structurally okay, we’ll be able to put a lot of those panels back, and we may be able to reopen a portion of the pier. The pier house appeared to not have any damage.”

Lein said strike teams were formed several years ago in each district of the State Parks system to assist in natural disasters. The teams are comprised of employees capable of running chainsaws, skid steers, backhoes and tractors.

“We had more than a dozen strike team members down there to join the men and women from Gulf State Park, working together as one team to clear roads and paths so support personnel had access to all of the park,” Lein said. “They achieved a huge amount of relief to the park in three days. They brought generators with them to power part of the Lodge and the park office. I can’t say enough about the strike teams and how successful their deployment was in supporting the Gulf State Park staff. The crews were all fed by the chef and staff at the Lodge’s Food Craft restaurant, and that was such a morale booster for the teams to get a warm meal.”

Commissioner Blankenship said he has been impressed by the spirit of cooperation and willingness of folks who don’t live on the Gulf Coast to lend a helping hand.

“I appreciate our strike teams that came down to assist at Gulf State Park,” he said. “They have done a great job of cleaning up the park. It will help us get the park reopened a lot quicker, and it allows for some of our employees who rode out the storm to take care of their families and limit the damage done to their homes. That’s extremely important. Every single employee was without power for a certain amount of time and had damage at their residences they needed to attend to. Having people come in from areas that weren’t impacted helped those affected people. It is very important to me to have our employees taken care of.”

Meanwhile, Commissioner Blankenship said the Alabama Marine Resources Division (MRD) facilities in Dauphin Island sustained significant damage. The MRD office building suffered roof damage, and the docks at the office were destroyed.

“But Meaher State Park on the Causeway and 5 Rivers Delta Resource Center seemed to do okay,” he said. “There were trees down but not a lot of other damage.”

David Rainer is an award-winning writer who has covered Alabama’s great outdoors for 25 years. The former outdoors editor at the Mobile Press-Register, he writes for Outdoor Alabama, the website of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Another great sign is that UA set a record high for the amount of quarantine/isolation rooms available on-campus. Only 1.74% of these rooms are occupied (9/518), down from 3.88% seven days ago.

Additionally, numbers at UAB and UAH continue to look strong. In Birmingham, 16 students tested positive compared to 13 at UAH. These are both week-over-week decreases.

At UAB, zero isolation rooms are being used — a landmark feat; at UAH, 25.9% of isolation rooms are in use (22/87 rooms), a slight improvement from the previous week.

A release from the System advised, “No cases have been traced to contact in the classroom on any of the three campuses. There are no reports of current hospitalization.”

Finally, sentinel testing of students, faculty and staff is ongoing System-wide, with less than 1% of individuals from this form of sample testing being positive. A release from the System advised this indicates “virus mitigation strategies are effective and there is a very low rate of asymptomatic positive cases throughout the UA System.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, has credited the “strong leadership” and meticulous planning of the UA System for its successful return-to-campus efforts.

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn

Jones has been a staunch pro-abortion advocate while in the U.S. Senate, previously voting against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act two separate times. That legislation would prohibit abortion after 20 weeks’ gestation based on scientific research suggesting that fetuses are capable of feeling pain by that point in pregnancy, per National Review. A report released recently suggested that fetal pain is in fact possible even earlier in pregnancy than 20 weeks.

Alabama’s junior U.S. senator also previously voted against banning using federal funds for abortions.

“Earlier this year, Coach Tuberville’s opponent Doug Jones laughed off the issue of painful late-term abortion and called it ‘stupid’. Doug Jones went so far as to vote in favor of late-term abortion and was demoted to an ‘F’ grade on our National Pro-Life Scorecard,” Dannenfelser added. “In contrast, Coach Tuberville is 100% pro-life and will be an outspoken voice for the unborn. Just as he delivered victory on the football field, we have full confidence that he will deliver big wins for the pro-life movement.”

In a statement to Yellowhammer News, Tuberville welcomed the endorsement.

“I’m proud to have the endorsement of one of the nation’s most active and respected pro-life organizations,” the former Auburn University head football coach said in a statement to Yellowhammer News.

“In the 47 years since Roe v. Wade was handed down, more than 60 million unborn lives have been senselessly taken,” Tuberville continued. “As Alabama’s interim senator, Doug Jones has voted to preserve late term abortions and even supports using our taxpayer dollars to fund them. I’ll fight to protect the unborn and vote to confirm judges who will overturn the travesty known as Roe v. Wade. It’s time to replace Doug Jones with a senator who will represent our conservative Alabama values, not the California and New York values of his liberal campaign donors.”

The endorsement came the same day that Jones confirmed that he will not consider the merits of President Donald Trump’s next Supreme Court of the United States nominee, who will be announced by the president on Saturday evening.

“I will not support the confirmation of any Supreme Court justice nominee, regardless of who it might be — I will not support that nominee — before the outcome of the November 3 election has been determined,” Jones said.

“Senator Doug Jones betrayed Alabamians when he voted against Justice Kavanaugh and has betrayed them again today, before President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee has even been named,” Dannenfelser said in a separate statement.

“During his short time in office, Jones has proven to be an extremist, repeatedly siding against constituents and voting with the most radical members of his party – like Kamala Harris – in favor of abortion on demand through birth, paid for by taxpayers. … Jones is unfit to represent the pro-life, pro-Trump state of Alabama and will be held accountable at the ballot box,” she concluded.

Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn

“You know, that was one of the things that was frustrating — an opportunity to try to communicate with the Governor’s office,” he said. “They had a call with mayors, commissioners and the legislative delegation — and they didn’t seem interested in talking about some of the things that really needed some works. As a matter of fact, I heard by my count seven different times that they didn’t want to hear any gripes at all. That was pretty frustrating. I understand during an emergency, you don’t want to dwell on things that are not going well. But at the same time, sometimes you need to figure out a way to actually talk about things that may need some improvements, so they don’t continue to happen, and that’s something we’ve got to get past. The administration has got to be willing to say there are some things that did not go well. We’ve got to be able to have an honest dialogue about what those things were and figure out a way to improve them and not simply gloss over them and say, ‘Everything is great, and there’s no need for improvement.'”

“That came from the chief of staff and the deputy chief of staff,” Elliott replied. “It wasn’t received well by me or other local electeds down here. They said, ‘Gosh, we’re big boys and girls. We need to be able to talk about things that are not working well, especially as they continue to go on if something is not working, let’s try to fix it and fix it now as opposed to simply saying everything is great and we don’t need to look at any other problems.'”

Yellowhammer News confirmed Elliott’s account of the “no griping” instruction with other participants on the call.

Yellowhammer News also reached out to Ivey’s office for comment. Ivey spokeswoman Gina Maiola offered the following emailed response:

It is unfortunate that the tone and content of this phone call is being taken out of context. The Governor’s Office initiated a phone call between the local leaders, legislative delegation and emergency managers in Baldwin County to hear the critical needs from those on the ground in response to the hurricane. At the request of the local officials on the call, Deputy Chief of Staff Liz Filmore set parameters of the discussion in order to have a productive and timely call with a large group. At no point was anyone told they cannot express frustration with our office, but the call should not deviate from the intent – getting help to the people affected by Hurricane Sally. Of course, there will be a time and a place for an after-action report, and we will all want to address areas to improve before the next disaster. However, the governor and our team’s priority remains laser-focused on helping the people of Coastal Alabama recover.

@Jeff_Poor is a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Alabama, the editor of Breitbart TV, a columnist for Mobile’s Lagniappe Weekly and host of Mobile’s “The Jeff Poor Show” from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. on FM Talk 106.5.