Georgia's insured losses from Monday night's fatal storms will total at least $32 million, said Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner Ralph T. Hudgens.
Hudgens, speaking at a press conference Tuesday in Jonesboro, said the estimate will likely climb and does not include uninsured losses.
The violent storms that swept the state killed seven.
A tree fell on a car in northwest Atlanta Tuesday morning, killing 21-year-old Chris Butler, who was identified at the scene by his cousin. The woman said Butler was on his way to visit her when killed.
The tree fell on the car on Tilden Avenue near West Marietta Street, trapping Butler, who was later pronounced dead.
Atlanta police spokeswoman Kim Jones said that Butler was driving southbound, headed away from West Marietta Street shortly after 8 a.m. when his car was crushed by the huge tree, which is about four feet in diameter and about 100 feet tall.
“It’s a huge tree, and with all the winds last night and the rain, it just gave way,” Jones said. “It fell right over the passenger and the driver compartment, so anybody that was in that vehicle would be deceased.”
Schwann Price, who lives in the Howell Station neighborhood, said she heard a loud boom around 8 a.m.
She said that when she went outside and saw the tree on the car, “I just knew it was something that wasn’t good.”
Elsewhere across metro Atlanta, residents woke up to power outages, downed trees and a messy commute after the line of heavy storms with wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour pounded the state.
South of the metro area, six deaths were attributed to the storms. A father in his 20s and his 3-year-old son died when high winds blew a tree onto a home near Jackson in Butts County. The man's girlfriend and an older child were also in the house, but survived.
Jackson Fire Capt. David Dunn estimated the winds at 50 to 60 miles per hour. He said the father, Alix Bonhomme Jr., and the boy, Alix III, were found dead by firefighters.
"It's extra hard when a child's involved," Dunn said. "I have children myself, other guys do too, and it really hits home when you have to remove a child."
The boy's mother, Marcie Moorer, said she and Bonhomme had been together four years and planned to marry in July. She said her 3-year-old "was so sweet, he loved everybody. As long as there was somebody he could talk to, he was going to talk to them. And everybody loved his curly hair."
In Dodge County, emergency management officials reported one person was killed and three others injured when a mobile home was destroyed by a tornado. Killed was 45-year-old Christopher McNair of Cochran.
Two people died in Colquitt County, the Tifton Gazette reported.
The newspaper reported on its website that Ronnie Taylor, a 56-year-old employee of the Colquitt County Roads and Bridges Department, was killed Monday night when a tree fell on his county truck. A county inmate was killed Tuesday when a tree fell on him as he helped with storm cleanup, according to the Gazette.
In nearby Irwin County, Carl Lott, 44, was killed when a tree crashed into his Ocilla home, the Gazette reported.
The storms caused nearly186,000 Georgia Power customers to lose power across the state, including 70,000 outages in metro Atlanta.
Jeff Wilson, a spokesman for the utility, told the AJC the outages were scattered "all over" the metro area. "You can say the same thing about the state -- all over," he said.
Terri Statham, a spokeswoman for Georgia Electric Membership Corporation, said an additional 89,000 EMC customers across the state were without power at 3 p.m. About 19,000 of those outages were in metro Atlanta, she said.
Most outages "were the result of trees and limbs on power lines, with reports of lines down and many broken power poles," Statham said.
By early Wednesday, the total number of outages in the state had been cut to 90,700, with 22,500 of those in metro Atlanta.
The National Weather Service reported trees down in dozens of counties across the state, including in midtown Atlanta, where a large tree blocked Deering Road near Peachtree Road at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Traffic lights along a stretch of Peachtree south of the Brookwood Amtrak station were out.
Not far from there, a tree fell on a Georgia Tech family housing building on 10th Street. No injuries were reported.
In Floyd County, authorities reported that lightning had sparked five house fires overnight.
The weather service said it was waiting for damage assessments in Floyd and Gilmer counties to determine if a tornado struck.
Other areas hard-hit by the storms include Barrow County, where the county administration building in Winder sustained wind damage, and Gordon County, where baseball-sized hail pounded the Resaca area.
In Winder, Barrow County fire Lt. Scott Dakin reported "extensive" damage to the county's administration building.
"A large portion of the roof was blown off the building by the heavy winds," Dakin said. "This of course created some flooding in the building as well."
In neighboring Gwinnett County, fire Capt. Tommy Rutledge said trees fell on at least 14 houses in the county, but no injuries were reported.
The damage reports began streaming in around 6 p.m. Monday as the first of the strong storms moved into the northwest corner of the state. The long squall line of storms that moved through metro Atlanta just before midnight was approaching the Savannah area just before 6 a.m. Tuesday.
The fast-moving storms dumped large amounts of rain in a short period of time. Overnight rainfall totals include 1.3 inches in Dunwoody, 1.1 inches in Marietta, 1.07 inches in Peachtree City and 1.04 inches at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Skies should be sunny the remainder of the week, with afternoon highs gradually warming back into the low 80s by Saturday, Channel 2 Action News meteorologist Karen Minton said.
Return to ajc.com for the most updated information available. Send your weather photos to breakingnews@ajc.com. Follow @ajc on Twitter. Throughout the day, tune to AM 750 and now 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB for the latest on traffic conditions.
-- Staff photographer John Spink contributed to this report.
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