Shortly before 12:30 a.m. April 9, 1998, a tornado struck the Dunwoody area, leaving one person dead, homes destroyed and a suburban forest virtually wiped away.
Other parts of Georgia were also impacted by the storm system when tornadoes touched down, including Cobb, Fulton, Gwinnett, Haralson and Liberty counties, but the “Dunwoody tornado” is still remembered by many 25 years later.
More than 200 homes were initially condemned, with more than 3,000 DeKalb County homes sustaining damage as a result of the storm. The destructive path of the storm was also very visible when at least 60,000 trees were felled.
In the years since then, some homeowners rebuilt, some residents said goodbye to Dunwoody, and high-profile efforts to restore much of the natural canopy were undertaken.
One of the positive things to come after the tornado was the revival of the community’s Lemonade Days, reflecting the mantra “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” This year’s festival is scheduled for April 19-23 at Brook Run Park.
Here are excerpts from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s coverage at the time:
Tornado makes Dunwoody look like a war zone
A life has been lost. Homes are split in half. Trees look like broken toothpicks. Power lines are strewn everywhere, and water gushes down the streets.
The tornado that blew through the north Atlanta area early today has left a part of Dunwoody in shambles, with residents stunned and in tears.
“It looks like a nuclear war hit here,” said a shaken Edwin Rothberg, who lives on Leisure Lane, where a lot of the damage took place.
Early today, streets in this Dunwoody neighborhood were impassable as police and emergency personnel went from house to house making sure residents were safe.
One death was confirmed — a 72-year-old man killed on Delverton Drive when he was in bed and a tree came crashing through his house.
There were other minor injuries, such as broken limbs and bumps and bruises, but medical personnel had trouble transporting the injured because of the impassable streets.
For the most part, said Lynn Cleland, who lives on Delverton, “We were all pretty lucky, very lucky.”
As the sun came up, residents walked outside their homes and couldn’t believe what they were seeing. At some homes, such as Cleland’s, trees opened up huge holes in the roofs.
“We were sleeping, and it woke us up, and we started walking downstairs,” Cleland said. “Then all of a sudden, we were looking up at the sky.”
— From a front-page story by I.J. Rosenberg, The Atlanta Journal, Thursday, April 9, 1998.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
North metro left a mess in wake of killer storm
Power may not be restored until next week to some parts of the north metro Atlanta area, and it may be a month before the mess is cleaned up. ...
Seven counties were declared federal disaster areas. Vice President Al Gore planned to visit the area today. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose district includes some of the hard-hit areas, flew over the area to inspect damage. ...
Gary McConnell, the state’s emergency management director, said by midafternoon, 76,000 people remained without power in Georgia. He estimated 700 houses were damaged or destroyed. ...
State troopers moved into the Dunwoody area Thursday night to augment DeKalb patrols trying to stave off looting.
— From a front-page story by R. Robin McDonald and Jack Warner, The Atlanta Constitution, Friday, April 10, 1998
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
‘We do still have a home’
A hand-painted address sign with a frowning “smiley” face. A decapitated mailbox sitting on a pile of freshly cut logs. A plywood sign beckoning an insurance adjuster. A tea kettle hissing on a Coleman camping stove on a home’s front steps. A woman walking her traumatized dog through a cul-de-sac that was utterly razed.
These were the signs Friday of storm-besieged north metro residents taking their first steps back to normalcy.
On Thursday, many residents wandered through devastated neighborhoods they barely recognized in dazed disbelief.
By Friday, they were coping with the cold reality of the situation. They cleared trees, shoveled debris and waited endlessly for insurance adjusters and contractors. Often, they couldn’t call out because telephone lines were down, and adjusters couldn’t get past police barricades into the affected neighborhoods.
Police who apologetically barred residents from returning to neighborhoods where power crews were reinstalling lines were met with anger, frustration and bewilderment.
“I’ve been called everything but a child of God,” one officer said.
They were angry; they were resigned; they were counting their blessings. And as they surveyed crushed houses, yards and gardens that were utterly obliterated by the winds, and a landscape that they no longer recognized, most said they were lucky to be alive and grateful they hadn’t lost far more.
Don and Shirley Byerly were in Toccoa when the tornado ripped through Fontainebleau Forest in Dunwoody, a subdivision that law enforcement authorities and residents say appears to have been ground zero. As Shirley Byerly enumerated the damage — a torn and leaking roof, soaked walls and carpets, another wall near collapse, her deck destroyed, a porch roof peeled away, cars buried under fallen trees, the loss of a magnolia, a weeping cherry, a silver maple she planted decades ago, and numerous pines — she cherished what remained.
Two Japanese maples that were Mother’s Day and Father’s Day gifts 15 years ago survived intact. So did her small crystal collection, undisturbed on a living room end table.
“I had the prettiest yard,” she said. “But we still do have a home.” ...
Wylie and Bill Poulos were in Florida on vacation when the tornado swept across Fontainebleau Court and gutted the house on a rise directly across the street from them. When they returned home Thursday, Bill Poulos missed the turn onto their home street because he no longer recognized it. ...
The tornado had torn away about 20 percent of the roof, crushed the garage roof, punctured the living room ceiling and struck a bathroom shower that ran until they returned home.
“Unless it rains, most of the furniture is OK,” Wylie Poulos said. “Most of our belongings weren’t blown all over the world.”
But trees used to be so numerous that the Pouloses didn’t even have curtains. “I used to call this my tree house,” she said. ...
Several miles away on the other side of Dunwoody ... Barbara and Bill Williams were stuck in their home of 31 years as three trees sprawled across their driveway. They had trees through the back of their home and were without electricity, heat and telephone. But their next-door neighbor was without water, so they felt somewhat lucky.
“We’re staying here,” declared Bill Williams, when asked where he was going or what he would do. “It’s like camping at home.”
- From story by Bill Torpy and R. Robin McDonald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Saturday, April 11, 1998
DeKalb struggles with grief
After her 72-year-old husband was killed in his bed by a falling tree, Ann Janisch went to the front door and, as people poured onto the street after the tornado, cried, “Help. Help.” But no one heard the small woman’s voice.
Janisch doesn’t have to worry about getting help now, as many friends and family have come to aid her since the wild storm ravaged scores of metro Atlanta homes, including hers on Delverton Drive in DeKalb County.
People here will tell you Delverton Drive — a winding street of maybe 40 homes that ends at a lake — is the prettiest block in the neighborhood. But now, one of the hardest-hit blocks in metro Atlanta has been mauled.
And like so many other streets wrecked when Thursday morning’s rustling wind turned raging, people here are helping one another. There are simple moments of generosity, like letting a neighbor use your driveway, and great acts of people coming through for one another — acts people remember for a lifetime.
This weekend, Suki Janisch was on her knees in the room where the tree crashed through and killed John Janisch, her father-in-law, a friendly man who enjoyed taking strolls and talking to neighbors. She was wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing the mattress of blood, taking a moment now and then to brush a tear from her eye.
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
The walls and ceiling were pulled down in the tornado, so she moved around in a surreal, open-air-doll-house scene. A family friend, Geraldine Johnson, was poking around the room’s wreckage looking for anything sentimental and salvageable.
“What about these?” she said holding up a man’s wire-rimmed glasses, bent and missing a lens. They decided to keep it. Earlier when they found an old ceramic figurine intact, it made Ann Janisch cry.
On the ground below, the couple’s 38-year-old son, Kurt, was chopping the fallen limbs of the tall trees that had beautifully defined this Dunwoody street, which now looked as though some giant with a dull scythe went berserk and whacked them down. Above on the remaining roof, workers nailed a blue tarp that would be draped across the exposed room.
“We’re just trying to make the house habitable for Mom,” said Kurt Janisch.
He had spent the past two days making funeral arrangements for his father, a former Eastern Airlines worker. “The house,” he said, looking to the devastated room, “is trivial.”
Friday, a stranger appeared at the Janisch home and asked whether he could help clear the damage.
“He’s out back working in the trees,” said Kurt Janisch. “I don’t even know his name.”
- By Craig Schneider, front-page story, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, April 12, 1998
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Credit: AJC
Revisit our Atlanta Journal-Constitution from the years after the tragic destruction:
» WATCH: 20 years later, Dunwoody resident remembers night that tornado destroyed her home
