North Georgia Cleans Up After Strong Storms, Possible Tornado
Paulding and Haralson Counties sustained the most damage from Saturday night’s storm. This home, in Buchanan, appears destroyed.
COURTESY OF JOHN GERARD / 11ALIVE.COM/WXIA-TV
As the sun rose Saturday, the Georgia Emergency Management Agency began a busy morning assessing storm damage all across North Georgia.
“We’ve had reports of downed trees, and power lines,[and] blocked roads. We expect to see a lot of debris,” GEMA spokeswoman Lisa Janak told WABE News.
While Janak couldn’t confirm if a tornado hit Paulding County, she did say that part of the metro area sustained the most damage.
Jessica Fieux, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the Associated Press that it appeared a tornado had moved from Haralson County into Paulding County around 9PM Friday.
Aerial shots from local TV news helicopters showed mangled airplanes on the tarmac of the Paulding/Northwest Atlanta airport. Houses surrounding the area were also heavily damaged.
Officials say they’ve received no report of anyone being killed in metro Atlanta, although one man had to be rescued from his collapsed home in Haralson County.
Although heavy storms had exited the area by mid-morning, GEMA said parts of eastern and southeastern Georgia were still under the gun.
Meanwhile, power crews from Georgia Power were spent the overnight restoring outages.
Georgia Power spokesman Mark Williams said many roads were closed because of downed trees and power lines.
Most electricity had been restored, but Williams said 1,500 homes across Georgia remained without power as of 8AM. He said 1,200 of those were in metro Atlanta.
In many places, two+ inches fell in a short amount of time, leading to ponding on roadways. Several small creeks were also expected to reach flood stage.
Georgia was largely spared from the extreme weather that devastated the Midwest and Southeast Friday afternoon.
Officials say at least 30 people were killed, and at least one town in southern Indiana was “wiped off the map.”
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