The Crowe Springs neighborhood, near Cartersville, lost most of its historic district in Wednesday night’s tornadoes.
The neighborhood, off of Crowe Springs Road, was built in the 1880s. Now, all that remains of building such as the Church of the Covenant, is just a stone foundation.
The remnants of the church itself lay in a pile of rubble about 50 feet away. Additional debris, such as amplifiers for the PA system, were another 50 feet from that.
Most of the houses have been destroyed to the point that it’s hard to even give an accurate count of how many are gone.
In the White-Cassville area, Janie Huskins’ family rode out the tornado in the “storm pit.” The family home, off of Gaines Road, has shifted five feet off of its foundation, and the back of the house has been demolished.
“It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life. My ears felt like they were going to explode,” Huskins told the AJC. “We came out, and everything was gone. We lost everything.”
Huskins’ next-door neighbor, John Franklin III huddled everyone in the basement once the power went off and the house started shaking.
“The pressure built up, your ears popped, and once the house started shaking, there was an instant smell of fresh air, almost like the house was gone,” he said.
Franklin, who was staying with relatives, returned to his own home hours later to find it had been lifted off its foundation.
“It’s just an empty lot now,” he told the AJC. “All of our personal items blown all over, all over the yard and across the street and into our neighbors' yards.”
Christy Morris and her husband and two daughters ran into the hallway after the tornado warnings crawled across the bottom of the TV screen. Morris said the floor started buckling, and wind began blowing underneath the doorway.
“I just grabbed our kids and covered us up with some pillows and prayed the whole time,” she said. “The house started snapping and popping, and then the wall caved in on me, my husband and our two kids,” Morris said.
She and her daughter, Amanda, were trapped underneath the rubble, and neighbors had to pull them free.
Amanda suffered a cracked spine but is going to be OK, Morris said.
“This whole community came out and helped each other,” she said.
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