By Wayne Crenshaw – wcrenshaw@macon.com
\n
\nPosted on Mon, May. 12, 2008 <\/p>\n

LAURENS COUNTY — Charles Blackburn did not describe what he saw
\nin the sky Sunday morning in Wrightsville as a tornado, but it did
\nrender him speechless.<\/p>\n

Blackburn, the public works director for the City of
\nWrightsville, was an eye witness to the storm that came over the
\ncity at about 6:45 a.m. He and public works employee Junebug Pope
\nwere in a pickup truck at the city’s wastewater treatment plant
\nwhen the weather suddenly turned ugly. Trees started snapping and
\nthen Blackburn saw a thick, grey, sheet of rain coming at him,
\npicking up trees and dropping them within 30 yards of the
\ntruck.<\/p>\n

“It was kind of a scary situation,” he said Monday. “We didn’t
\nspeak to each other for two or three minutes.”<\/p>\n

The storm cut a swath through Johnson County that destroyed
\nseveral homes, damaged many others, and felled pine trees by the
\nthousands.<\/p>\n

“This was by far the most significant weather event our
\ncommunity has experienced, just by the sheer widespread
\ndevastation,” said Wrightsville Police Chief Steve Gresham.<\/p>\n

Despite all the damage, there were no fatalities or serious
\ninjuries, but there was a Johnson County family in mourning Monday.
\nWadell Clements of Johnson County is the father of Tracey Clements,
\nwho was killed by the storm at his home in Laurens County. Tracey
\nClements’ wife, Lisa, was in critical condition at the Medical
\nCenter of Central Georgia, Wadell Clements said Monday. She has
\nsevere head injuries and brain damage, he said. But their two
\ndaughters escaped with only minor injuries. They were treated at
\nthe hospital and released.<\/p>\n

“They are real upset but holding on,” Clements said of the two
\ngirls. “They are accepting it as best they can.”<\/p>\n

Just a few hundred feet over from where the fatality occurred,
\nMargaret Pippin was watching volunteers clear fallen trees in her
\nfront yard.<\/p>\n

“I feel like we were very blessed,” she said. “All we had were
\ntrees down.”<\/p>\n

The volunteers working in her yard were Ralph Mullis and his
\nbrother, Herman Mullis. Ralph Mullis shut down his landscaping
\nbusiness to roam through the affected areas with his Bobcat on a
\ntrailer, with a sign on the rear that said “Can I help?” He stopped
\nfor anyone who asked, he said, at no charge. He planned to stay at
\nit all week if needed.<\/p>\n

“It was just so devastating, and we were so blessed that it
\nmissed us,” said Ralph Mullis, who is from Rentz. “We were blessed
\nnot to be involved in it, and we just wanted to help.”<\/p>\n

Crews were still working to restore power in Laurens and Johnson
\ncounties on Monday. There was no clear indication of when it would
\nall be restored.<\/p>\n

Chad Phillips, a lineman with Washington Electric Membership
\nCorp. was working with three cherry-picker crews on a lengthy
\nsection of downed lines along Ga. 319 between Wrightsville and
\nDublin.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been here 16 years and this is the worst storm I’ve
\nseen,” he said. “This is going to be a week-long job.”<\/p>\n

The EMC is getting help from several crews throughout Georgia,
\nhe said.<\/p>\n

The storm virtually clear-cut a wide swath of pine trees in
\nfront of the home of Shawn Wombles, Johnson County’s Emergency
\nManagement Agency director. From the outside the home appears
\nunscathed, except for the roof getting lifted off the garage, but
\nthe house might be a loss, said Wombles’ wife, Denise. The house
\nshifted on the foundation, and the frame cracked across the front
\nas if the top half was about to be lifted off when the storm
\npassed.<\/p>\n

In fact, Denise Wombles said the speed of the storm might have
\nsaved them. She estimated that it came and went within about 60
\nseconds.<\/p>\n

“If it had been here another 10 seconds, the top would probably
\nhave been gone,” she said.<\/p>\n

Shawn Wombles has been the EMA director for 15 years, and this
\nstorm was a new experience for him.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never had to be the one to be rescued,” he said. “I’ve
\nalways been the one to go help folks.”<\/p>\n

He was essentially trapped on his property because of all the
\ntrees over his driveway. Special equipment was brought in to clear
\nthe drive, but Wombles said the emergency response Sunday was
\nlargely coordinated by his deputy director, Burt Dixon Jr.<\/p>\n

“I feel like we did a great job yesterday,” he said.<\/p>\n

Johnson County schools were closed Monday, will be closed today,
\nand might be closed Wednesday, Gresham said. Although power has
\nbeen restored to schools and most of the city, so much of the
\ncounty is still without power that the school system opted to shut
\ndown until power is up to more people, he said.<\/p>\n

Across from Johnson County High School, the Red Cross and the
\nGeorgia Baptist Emergency Response Team were providing meals to
\nemergency workers, power company employees, victims and other
\nimpacted by the storm. The crew of about 20 people from around the
\nstate fed about 600 people for lunch Monday. But that was a breeze
\ncompared to the crew’s previous experience in Hurricane Katrina.
\nThe same crew fed 7,000 people in one day in that storm, said unit
\ndirector Bruce Poss. The team also had about another 20 people
\nworking in the county on cleanup duty Monday.<\/p>\n

“The Lord has just called me to do this and it is very
\nrewarding,” said Mary Wade of Thompson, who was helping dish out
\nfood.<\/p>\n

Rosa Spikes, who lives just outside of Wrightsville, escaped
\nstorm damage but was without power and didn’t have a way to cook,
\nshe said, after getting a meal at the center.<\/p>\n

“It feels good to have somebody who can help you when you are in
\nneed,” she said.<\/p>\n

Laurens County Sheriff Bill Harrell spent Monday going through
\nthe damaged areas of his county and checking on people. Many people
\nwere still without power, he said. He was cautioning people to
\nguard against con artists who crop up in disasters, offering to do
\nwork with cash up front but then not returning.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been trying to stress to make sure you don’t get
\nflim-flammed,” he said.<\/p>\n

Jan Walker, who lives on Beaver Dam Road about a mile off Ga.
\n112 in Wilkinson County, has had to deal with damage to four houses
\non her property. All of them were hit by trees. There’s
\nsubstantial roof damage, and siding on one of the houses buckled. A
\nportion of one roof blew about 100 yards away, she said. “It looks
\nlike a war zone around here. I need help.”<\/p>\n

Walker was in Kentucky when the storms blew through. “I came
\nhome to a kitchen full of water,” she said.<\/p>\n

Friends and family helped put tarps on the roofs and cleared
\naway debris as best they could, helping Walker’s daughter and
\ngranddaughter, who also live on the property. Walker said 100 or
\nmore trees may be down around her. A bulldozer was brought in to
\nhelp clear fallen trees off the dirt road leading to her home.<\/p>\n

Walker has few neighbors. She lives about three miles from the
\ncommunity of Stephensville, where tornado damage also was severe.
\nThe town of Toomsboro is about six miles away.<\/p>\n

Macon.com
\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.macon.com\/149\/story\/349059.html
\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Wayne Crenshaw – wcrenshaw@macon.com Posted on Mon, May. 12, 2008 LAURENS COUNTY — Charles Blackburn did not describe what he saw in the sky Sunday morning in Wrightsville as a tornado, but it did render him speechless. Blackburn, the public works director for the City of Wrightsville, was an eye witness to the storm… More \u00bbLaurens, Johnson counties cleaning up in deadly storms wake<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","neve_meta_reading_time":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourbigclan.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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