TIGER, Ga. -- Billy Browning picked up a cup of coffee to go Saturday morning at Tiger Food Mart. Before heading out the door and back to his home on Lake Burton he turned to the clerk.
“I’ll bet Boat Church will be full tomorrow morning,” he said. “Whole lot of praying. Whole lot of reason to pray.”
The tornado that ripped through the community of multi-million dollar homes along the lake Wednesday night took one life, but spared scores more. High winds destroyed about 32 homes, and damaged another 113. On Saturday many part-time resident drove up from Atlanta to inspect the scene. Others took stock of their blessings.
“My husband saved my life,” said Cecile Thompson, owner of the Timpson Creek Gallery, on U.S. 76, near the foot of Timpson Cove, where she has a huge lake home and was there asleep when the tornado hit.
“My husband grabbed my arm and yanked me out of bed, and shoved me out the door, onto the floor, just as our bedroom was imploding,” said Thompson.
Her husband, Dwayne, fell on top of her and shielded her from howling debris. They spent the rest of the night huddled in their bed with their dog, Smith, as rain poured through the splintered roof.
Rescue workers found them just before daybreak. "I heard them calling my name in the dark," said Thompson. "It was the sweetest sound I've ever heard."
Billy Browning and wife Sandy were so unscathed by the storm they didn’t know of the nearby devastation until the next morning, when Billy dropped by the Tiger Food Mart and was told a tornado hit the lake.
Saturday morning he took a reporter out in his pontoon boat to survey the obliterated houses on Moccasin Creek on the other side of the lake out of view from his home.
Several were swept from their foundations. An $850,000 A-frame the owner just closed on a week ago was dumped into the lake, the only thing visible was its roofline. Trees were snapped and stripped of bark and stood like gnawed and shaggy telephone poles.
“It’s heart-breaking if that was your home,” said Browning.
Over at Georgia Mountain Patrol home security, dispatcher Larry Cunningham said out-of-town homeowners have kept the phone ringing.
“Mostly what we’ve told people is their home is OK, but, we’ve had to tell some it’s not there anymore,” said Cunningham.
Jon Canada, a deputy commander for GEMA said his daily crews of about 100 are working as fast as they can to complete searches of residences, restore power, clear roads, and get lake life back to near normal.
On Saturday, GEMA officers were even turning away some homeowners, said Canada, until roads, debris, and power lines have been repaired. “Full-time residents have access,” he said.
GEMA closed all but the main lake channel at the south end near the dam Friday. Lake Burton may not be fully reopened until Friday because it’s dangerous to navigate and homes are too vulnerable, said GEMA officials.
Looting has been reported.
“We had a homeowner tell us yesterday something was stolen,” said Sgt. Doyte Chaffin, with Department of Natural Resources law enforcement, who was patrolling Wildcat Cove by boat Saturday morning. “We’re trying to make sure the area is secure.”
Secure, and near normal, can’t happen soon enough, as far as Barney Mayfield is concerned. He runs Anchorage Marine, which maintains boats, and retrieves ones that have been sunk, and many were when the storm hit.
But GEMA officials told him Friday he couldn’t go into the lake until the agency gives the all clear. “That just doesn’t make sense to me,” he said. “They need people to clear the debris and pull boats out of the water, and that’s what I do.”
He shook his head and walked away. Normal's going to take awhile.
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