Crews were still cleaning up downed trees and power lines Saturday in a few isolated spots around metro Atlanta in the aftermath of a dangerous overnight storm that killed 16 as it swept across the South but seems to have spared Georgia the worst of its wrath.
Sandy Springs resident Jodi Shearin and her two daughters averted tragedy only by quick thinking and dashing downstairs when they heard high winds and hail pummeling their home on Riverview Road around 8 p.m. Friday night.
“We had just finished dinner and I heard the hail coming down and I said, ‘we have to run downstairs now,” Shearin said Saturday. “We went down the stairs as fast as we could for cover in the laundry room. The tree landed in kitchen about 10 seconds later.”
Shearin, and daughters, Riley 14, and Julia, 3, were trapped in the house for a couple of hours as rain poured through the roof. Fire crews had to cut limbs from the massive oak before they could be rescued.
A crew using a huge crane was lifting the tree off Shearin’s house Saturday afternoon as Georgia Power crews, working the street strewn with branches and criss-crossed with fallen oaks and snapped power poles, sought to get the lights back on before dark.
Blake Linnekin, project manager with Treejob.com, said he had three crews and about 50 workers on the site. He estimated the storm took out 200 trees in the area and it would take two days to clean up the debris.
“I don’t think it was a tornado,” he said. “My guess is it was a microburst with winds of at least 80 miles an hour to do this much damage.”
Across other parts off the city there were reports overnight of several trees downed and a possible tornado was spotted in the Austell. But, as of Saturday afternoon, no injuries had been reported from the storm that Riverview Road residents said hit hard and fast.
"It came and went in about two minutes," said Stephanie Tarrer, who was home with her daughters Friday night while her husband, Rudy, and their two sons were downtown at the Atlanta Braves-New York Mets game, which was canceled because of the rains that started shortly before 7:30 p.m. game time.
Tarrer and her daughters, Kathyrn and Caroline, braced themself against the basement wall as the storm roared past, knocking down a huge hickory tree in the back yard that barely missed the house. In the basement she texed her husband at the ballgame: "I think a tornado just went over us."
Her husband Rudy and the boys, John and Philip, returned to find their street blocked by downed trees and power lines and only got home with the help of police. But all were safe. On Saturday the family strolled the street, amazed at the damage they saw.
It could have been far worse given the tornado watch that was issued by the National Weather Service until 6 a.m. Saturday. And the Atlanta area did take a beating, with hail of varying sizes falling all over over the city.
At the height of the storms, as many as 25,000 were without power. The Rome area, where at least 20 trees were reported down on houses, had about 5,000 without power early Saturday morning. "The main concentration is up in the Rome-Cartersville area," said Konswello Monroe, a Georgia Power spokeswoman. "They were hit hard."
About 1,000 homes in the Atlanta area were without power Saturday afternoon, according to Georgia Power. Electrical service was expected to be restored statewide by midnight.
Julie Brock of John's Creek was stranded in a restaurant with her family during the first of two waves of "big, fat marble" sized hail.
She was whacked on the knee as she sprinted to her SUV between the waves. She was inside and driving when the second hailstorm hit, pinging and cracking against the window and the metal roof.
“It was like being in the middle of a rock storm,” said Brock.
Gwinnett County firefighters doused a blaze that burned a two-story house in Norcross. According to the fire department spokesperson the person who called to report the fire around 8:30 p.m. said the fire started after lightening struck the house.
In Douglas County, the roof of a business collapsed, according to Channel 2 Action News. The Atlanta Dogwood Festival postponed its Comedy Summit show that was scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday.
Brian Hill, the festival's executive director, said the show would go on at 8 p.m. Saturday, as skies cleared through the day, temperatures climbed toward 70, and Jodi Shearin continued to counted her blessings from the night before.
The forecast calls for an overnight low in the 40s, with sunshine Sunday and temperatures in the mid-70s.
Staff Writers Ty Tagami, Kristi E. Swartz and Mike Morris contributed to this article.
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