Dauphin Island 90% Recovered One Year After Hurricane Sally, Mayor Says
Mayor Jeff Collier says Dauphin Island is 90 percent recovered one year after Hurricane Sally, with street light and building repairs still pending.
One year after Hurricane Sally battered Alabama’s coast, Dauphin Island is nearly back to normal — about 90 percent recovered, according to the town’s mayor.
Mayor Jeff Collier said the barrier island took a particularly hard hit from Sally, which unlike many tropical systems caused significant property damage across the community and made for an expensive cleanup. A year later, the work is almost finished.
“We’re probably 90 percent there from post-Sally of getting things repaired,” Collier said. “We’ve still got some things we’ve still got to do like street light repairs that are pending and a few other repairs to our municipal buildings, but other than that we are still up and running.”
The 2021 hurricane season has been gentler to the island, though Hurricane Ida still pushed significant sand and saltwater flooding onto the west end, keeping cleanup crews busy there.
Despite the repeated storms, residents say island life is worth it. Ken Bettin, who has lived on the west end for six years, called the storms one of the challenges of living anywhere. “Dauphin Island has like no crime, you can feel the breeze today. It’s worth the momentary disruptions,” he said.
Collier welcomed visitors to come enjoy the island ahead of the off-season as residents count their blessings a year after Sally’s landfall.
About Hurricane Sally
Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shores on Sept. 16, 2020, as a Category 2 storm with 105 mph winds. Dauphin Island, a barrier island at the mouth of Mobile Bay, is connected to the mainland by the Dauphin Island Bridge, which opened in 1982 after Hurricane Frederic destroyed the original bridge in 1979.
