Local Fire Department Destroyed in NE. Georgia

Tornadoes sweep through region, kill 1 By Crystal Boyles Independent-Mail September 16, 2004

FRANKLIN SPRINGS — Tornadoes that swept through northeast Georgia early Thursday afternoon killed one woman and left mostly walls at the Franklin Springs fire department and town hall building.

Rosemarie Crump, 38, died when an oak tree, 5-foot in diameter, fell on the Chevrolet Suburban she and her sister were sitting in near the Bold Springs community of Franklin County, deputy coroner Ken Smith said.

Ms. Crump’s family was at Ty Cobb Memorial Hospital where her sister was taken for minor injuries from the accident.

Tornadoes spawned from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan also touched down in Elbert County where most of the damage occurred in the eastern part of the county. Fort Branch, Middleton and Rock Branch communities were hit, said Jack Bell, county Emergency Management Agency deputy director. There were no reported injuries.

The tornado that came through Franklin Springs a little before 4 p.m. was "like a wash cycle for a washing machine," said Matt Elrod, a Franklin Springs volunteer firefighter and emergency services technician.

Standing on the Emergency Medical Services building porch, he watched the whole horizon "dip and come up" as the tornado formed. When the wall of rain hit, workers called dispatch and then huddled in the bathroom.

Albert Vealey Jr. and his wife Becky left their home in Quincy, Fla., two days ago and came to their son’s home in Franklin Springs to avoid Hurricane Ivan. Instead, they ended up hunkered down in a neighbor’s basement "praying real, real hard."

"We could hear all this commotion and we didn’t know what was going on," Mrs. Vealey said. "We heard the noise from the tornado and we started praying."

The Vealeys, their son Andrew, his wife Melinda and their 7-week-old son, Calvin, took shelter at Kirk and Nelle Hartsfield’s home.

Mrs. Hartsfield said she and her husband heard it on their weather radio and "we called that couple and said we have a basement. It ain’t pretty but come on."

Both houses were mostly unscathed but the city hall and fire department a quarter mile up the road didn’t fare as well. The tornado ripped off most of the roof and left the brick walls in piles on the ground.

He had plans to build a new fire station in January, but now it looks as though those plans have changed, he said.

The station’s four fire trucks were in the building when the tornado hit but they’re not sure how much damage they sustained, City Manager Bobby Shores said.

Firemen from Canon, Five Area, Sandy Cross, Royston and Franklin Springs all were on hand to remove debris and trees from the roads and houses. Georgia Power workers were trying to restore power but didn’t know when that would be. Thousands of people were reported without power late Thursday.

Twisters also damaged or destroyed about 25 homes and 15 to 20 chicken houses in the Carnesville area, said Doug Outlaw, meteorologist with the National Weather Service based in Greer, S.C.

One was also reported in the Reed Creek area of Hart County, at 6:15 p.m. and trees and power lines were down, he said. Flooding was reported in Habersham County, on U.S. 441, at about 7 p.m., but officials weren’t sure how much, Mr. Outlaw said.

"I don’t know how many tornadoes have hit, but it’s a lot," county Emergency Management Agency director Henry Gordon said. "I don’t know why they’re hitting our county but they’re hitting it hard."

He estimated at least 10 tornado touch downs concentrated in the Westminster area.

As a tornado approached a Wal-Mart store in Seneca, S.C., store officials gathered about 150 customers into the center of the store for about 30 to 45 minutes at about 6:30 p.m.

Store manager Lee Jolly said most of the customers had stopped by after work to pick up emergency supplies to use during the storm.

More heavy rain is expected in northeast Georgia and the South Carolina mountains and there is a possibility of more severe weather today.

The National Weather Service predicts maximum rainfall of 10 to 15 inches on the region through Saturday, with higher amounts in some mountain areas.

—Anderson Independent-Mail reporters Charmaine Smith and Heidi C. Williams contributed to this story.

Crystal Boyles can be reached at (800) 859-6397, Ext. 326, or by e-mail at boylescs@IndependentMail.com.

Yea, it got a bit rough around this area yesterday afternoon and evening. They finally sent us home from UGA at 3:30 because the tornado sirens kept going off.

A subdivision a few miles from here suffered extensive damage, as did the rec dept. and library.

Here is the local newspaper article.

Feeling Ivan's ire

By Lee Shearer
lee.shearer@onlineathens.com

The violent remnants of Hurricane Ivan left a trail of damage through Northeast Georgia Thursday, leaving tens of thousands of homes without power and spawning tornados that killed a person in Franklin County and injured several in Madison County.

Authorities feared more fierce weather could follow, including wind damage and possible flooding, as more tendrils of the storm system swept through overnight and Friday morning.

At least four people were reported injured when an apparent tornado swept down on two Madison County neighborhoods at about 3 p.m., but none of the injuries were serious.

High winds also caused extensive damage in Athens, with numerous downed trees, blocked roads and power outages, according to the Georgia State Patrol. A downed power line closed Lexington Road east of Barnett Shoals Road for several hours Thursday night.

By about 9 p.m., some 14,000 homes were without power in the Athens area, according to Georgia Power Co. spokesman John Sell. About 40,000 homes throughout Northeast Georgia were without power, he said.

Nearly 16,000 Jackson EMC customers were without power in counties north and west of Athens. Storm damage was lighter south of Athens. According to a Walton EMC spokesman, fewer than 3,000 had lost electricity as of about 6 p.m.

Trees snapped and fell throughout the region, including big trees down in Cobbham, Five Points and Winterville, said Athens-Clarke police Capt. James Williams.

"This is going to be an all-night situation, and we don't know what other challenges the weather will bring us," Williams said Thursday night. "It's pretty serious."

The bad weather also prompted four area school systems to call off classes today. Others monitored the situation and said they would decide this morning whether to close for the day.

The University of Georgia and Athens Technical College called off Thursday classes soon after a tornado warning sent students and teachers huddling into protected areas of campus buildings.

Officials said a decision would be made early Friday whether to hold classes today.

The Georgia Emergency Management Agency said it appeared Franklin and Madison counties bore the brunt of the storm.

In Madison county, a mobile home in the Alberta Drive neighborhood near Colbert was picked up off its foundation and flung into a barn behind the house, destroying the barn. Five people were inside the trailer and barn but none was seriously injured, said Madison County 911 director David Camp.

Fragments of the trailer also flew into the home next door of Willie and Nell Wymbs, said Nell Wymbs, who was at home with her baby granddaughter and her 16-year-old niece when the storm struck.

Nell Wymbs said she tried to close the front door when the tornado's fierce wind blew it open. She got it shut, barely, but the wind still blew her back into the house, the baby in her arms, she said. She got her niece and headed for the protected bathroom area, shards of glass flying at them as the tornado popped windows in the north end of the house. They huddled together till the storm was past - no more than a minute or so, she said.

But they came out to find part of the roof gone and part of the ceiling caved in, and the yard was a disaster area. A tree had fallen on her husband's new Ford truck, which he got just five days ago, he said.

A dozen or more of her neighbors had damage ranging from severe - at least one other home had partially collapsed - to a few shingles blown off the roof.

In the nearby Kingston Greens subdivision, the tornado seemed not to have touched down but passed over at about roof level. Perhaps two dozen homes there had significant roof damage. As on Alberta Drive, a small army of friends and neighbors had organized themselves to get ready for the next storm wave and clean up as much as possible. At one house, the Booth brothers, Phil, Greg and Randy, hurried to stretch a big blue tarp over the rafters of their parents' home on Kingston Way before the next storm band rolled through, its shingles blown away in the storm. The storm actually sucked an attic stairway up into the attic, Phil Booth said.

The Booths' parents were luckier than some. Nearby neighbors Michael and Therese Stonecipher had lost a big chunk of their roof, which now lay in the yard.

Still a bit stunned two hours after the storm, Michael Stonecipher still took a positive attitude - it's a head start on the bonus room he's been wanting to build over the garage, he said.

But it wasn't anything anyone wanted to go through again. "You could see things flying by the window. It was like a movie. It's not something I want to experience again," said Sandy Waldrip, who was about to leave her Kingston Way house as the storm approached, changed her mind, and then barely had time to get her neighbor's two children and huddle in a bathroom.

"I was freaked out," said one of the girls, Cortney Boggs, 11.

Cortney said she saw a sudden darkness fall, and watched the wind pick up a stack of empty Diet Coke cans and scatter them across the yard before Waldrip took them to a safer place than in front of a window.

Farther west along Georgia Highway 98, high winds caused heavy damage to a cluster of Madison County public facilities, including the library, the senior center and the main recreational complex.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, but the senior center and library were partially destroyed as the storm ripped away the eastern wall of the senior center and western wall of the library, leaving a pile of bricks in front of the sagging library wall.

Sue Gaddis' home next door to the senior center was struck when a mature chinaberry tree split and fell, but she was safe at Madison County High School after her daughter called and relayed National Weather Service warnings.

"I think I was real lucky," said Gaddis, who has lived in the farm house since 1965.

Madison County's 911 operators worked with power from emergency generators Thursday, as officials solicited all volunteer firemen and "anyone with a chain saw" to begin to clear downed trees blocking an undetermined number of roads throughout the northern part of the county, Camp said.

The East Georgia Chapter of the American Red Cross opened a shelter for those who were affected by the damage caused by the storm at the Hull Baptist Church on Charlie Bolton Road and Georgia Highway 72.

Gretchen Jesse, director of development for the chapter, said the shelter will have water available and some food for the victims of the storm, as well as a place to stay overnight. She added that those staying overnight will need to provide their own bedding. Jesse said that there will also be people there to offer emotional counseling.

She said another shelter is planned to open soon in Northeast Georgia, but a site has not been located as of Thursday.

About 200,000 Georgians were without power Thursday evening, and that number was increasing by the minute. Georgia Power spokesman Tal Wright reported about 155,000 households without power, while Georgia EMC spokeswoman Terri Brown said power had been knocked out for about 40,000 of their customers.

Up to 10 inches of rain is expected in the north Georgia mountains through Saturday, and up to 8 inches from northwest Georgia to Macon.

Other parts of Georgia were drenched with up to 7 inches of rain as the storm spread across the state.

Georgia's state of emergency was extended through Monday, which gives state agencies and emergency management agencies the ability to keep working and helping officials and local agencies.

"The primary concern at this point is the potential for flooding. I really don't think the full impact of the storm has made its way to Georgia," said Loretta Lepore, spokeswoman for Gov. Sonny Perdue.

Tornadoes were spotted Thursday across the top two-thirds of the state, from Stewart County along the Alabama border to Franklin County in the northeast, said National Weather Service meteorologist Barry Gooden. Tornadoes were also confirmed in counties including Greene, Wilkes, Upson, Pike, Lamar, Spalding, Polk and Monroe.

Several Georgia counties west of Interstate 75 north of Macon reported flooding, causing some highways and surface streets to close, Gooden said.

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