Jan Wesner Childs
Residents across the South on Saturday continued the long process of clean up and recovery after severe weather and tornadoes carved a path of destruction that left at least five people dead and dozens of homes damaged or destroyed.
So far, the strongest of the destructive tornadoes was an EF4 confirmed in the Coweta County, Georgia, community of Newnan. The National Weather Service said the damage was consistent with winds up to 170 mph.
"Right now our hearts are broken, but our spirits are not broken," Newnan High School Principal Chase Puckett said at a news conference Saturday morning.
The high school is in a part of the city that took the worst of the damage. Twisted metal, insulation, downed power lines and other debris littered the campus and nearby neighborhood.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp toured the region Saturday, a day after local emergency responders began to assess the damage.
“We have a lot of work left ahead of us,” Pat Wilson, Coweta County fire chief, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday morning. “We expect we’re going to be out here for some time to come.”
Amy Wright, a resident of the Coweta County town of Newnan, ran to shelter in a bathroom with her four children after looking out her front door with the storm bearing down.
“The sky was lit up and it was thundering and then it got really quiet,” Wright told the AJC. “Then out of nowhere, it started raining and I went back into the house and the walls started shaking. You could hear it coming over the top of the house.”
(MORE: Severe Weather Outbreak Spawns Damaging Tornadoes in the South)
One person is reported to have died after having a medical emergency during the storm in Coweta County. Wilson said downed trees and debris hampered efforts to reach the man.
The National Weather Service declared a tornado emergency for Newnan shortly after midnight Friday. The city, about 35 miles southwest of Atlanta, experienced heavy damage in and around its historic downtown, according to a tweet from city officials.
Several downtown streets were closed Friday morning, and residents were asked to avoid the area due to multiple downed trees and power lines.
Newnan High School also received significant damage. Trees in the surrounding neighborhood were snapped in half and some fell on houses, according to weather.com meteorologist Orelon Sidney, who was at the scene. A nearby elementary school was also hit.
“To see the high school with the damage that it has and the community with the damage that it sustained last night it’s just a surreal feeling," Coweta County Schools Superintendent Evan Horton told The Weather Channel Friday morning. "Kind of hard to take in right now.”
The high school had just finished repairs to a roof that was damaged during severe weather in October, Horton said.
All Coweta County Schools were closed Friday for both in-person and virtual instruction. Classes were also canceled in Bartow County, about 50 miles north of Atlanta, due to power outages, localized flooding and impassible roads.
Coweta-Fayette EMC, an area utility provider for Newnan, was working to restore power after at least 30 poles were broken.
"Restoration will be a slow process," the company said in a Facebook post. "There’s a lot of debris that is making traveling roads difficult. A lot has to be cleared about before crews can even work in some areas."
Besides the Newnan tornado, at least seven tornadoes had been confirmed in Alabama, two in Kentucky, one in Mississippi and one in Tennessee as of Friday afternoon.
Newnan police officer, Donald Evans, left, and Principal Chase Puckett, right, walked the Newnan High campus. Storms that rolled through North Georgia late Thursday into Friday, March 26, 2021, left a path of destruction. Most of metro Atlanta was spared from major damage, but Bartow and Polk counties ― in northwest Georgia ― and Coweta County south of Atlanta took the brunt of the impact. Coweta firefighters and police officers worked in the dark to rescue people trapped in their homes and clear roads after a powerful storm slammed the area early Friday.More than 18,000 homes and businesses were without power in Georgia as of about 8:30 a.m. EDT Friday, according to poweroutage.us. More than 140,000 power outages were being reported in Ohio due to winds from the same weather system.
More than 24,000 outages were also being reported in Alabama.
Most of those were resolved by Saturday afternoon.
The worst of the weather's wrath came Thursday afternoon in Calhoun County, Alabama, where at least five people were killed.
Four of the victims lived in Ohatchee, about 60 miles northeast of Birmingham, and included a family of three in a wood-frame home and a man who was in a mobile home. A fifth person was killed in a mobile home in Wellington. Several were missing.
Carol Tomlin rode out the storm in a bathtub as her home in the Eagle Point neighborhood in Shelby County, Alabama, near Birmingham was destroyed around her Thursday.
“The house was shaking, I could hear things hitting the house, I could hear the wind. It was terrifying," Tomlin told The Weather Channel Friday morning.
"It's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life."
Tomlin's husband wasn't home, but she called him when the chaos stopped. He had to convince her to leave the bathroom.
“And when I walked down the hallway, there was debris everywhere," she said.
Windows were blown out. A large section of the roof was collapsed.
And now, like many other families in the area, the couple is figuring out what to do next.
“We don’t know … We’ve got to find somewhere to live," Tomlin said. "We’ll just take it a day at a time.”
Several homes were damaged in the neighborhood.
A volunteer picks up artwork found in debris surrounding a destroyed home the morning after a tornado that hit the Eagle Point community on March 26, 2021, south of Birmingham, Ala.The deadly tornado that hit Calhoun County was part of a supercell that tracked more than 150 miles into Georgia.
Stunned residents took stock of the damage there Thursday night.
Jake Armstrong, who lives on Boiling Springs Road in Ohatchee, came home from work to discover his home was completely gone.
“I don’t know where it’s at,” Armstrong told the Anniston Star.
The twisted wreckage of a small building remained behind the house. One of Armstrong's dogs was missing.
Nearby, another home was wiped off the map.
“The house is gone," Harold Magouirk said. "It got blown away."
Buddy West, whose home survived after the back door was ripped off, has experienced other tornadoes.
But none like Thursday's, he told the Star.
“This here’s the worst one I’ve seen,” West said.
Piles of debris remain after a tornado touched down killing several people and damaging multiple homes, Thursday, March 25, 2021, in Ohatchee, Alabama.Several Alabama school districts were closed or delayed opening on Friday. Others in affected areas were already closed for spring break, according to AL.com.
A police officer was struck by lightning in Florence, Alabama, while putting out barricades on a roadway Thursday afternoon. A news release said he was conscious and responsive after the incident.
Dozens of homes were damaged in Pelham, Alabama, in Shelby County about 15 miles south of Birmingham.
Pelham Fire Chief Mike Reid said 22 homes sustained major damage and about 40 others were also affected, AL.com reported.
“Fortunately, we had no injuries reported to us, and we have done primary and secondary searches to both of these areas that were hit the hardest," Reid said.
(MORE: Your Cell Phone Can Help Keep You Safe in Severe Weather, But Here's What You Need to Do)
Pelham Police Chief Pat Cheatwood said the scene was devastating.
“It broke my heart to see the amount of damage that these homes have sustained," Cheatwood said. "These are well-established homes that have been a part of our community for many, many years.”
Residents will be under a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. each night through Monday.
The Hoover Fire Department treated one person for injuries in Greystone Farms, and an ambulance was called to transport a second person, the Hoover Sun reported.
A woman was killed by a tree in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, Wednesday night.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.
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