Leaves thousands without power
Josh Chancey and his family saw firsthand how scary a violent thunderstorm can be when it slammed into their Buckhorn neighborhood last week.
“It really went from just another normal evening to pretty much chaos in a matter of minutes — it was crazy,” he said of the July 30 squall that hit around 6:45 p.m.
“The power went out, but what made me think this is really, really bad is when my wife Candice was looking out our bedroom window and saw a tree fall that is longer than our entire yard,” he continued. “When that tree fell, I said, ‘This is bad,’ so I told everybody to get their shoes on. I walked into the kitchen area and a similar-size tree had fell completely across the neighbor’s yard into my yard and destroyed our fence.”
Chancey quickly herded his wife, kids and dog into their home’s crawl space and went to check on his neighbors.
“They were OK, but while all this was going on, my neighbor was backing out of his driveway and a tree fell about 10 feet in front of his truck — so he missed getting crushed by a tree by about 10 feet,” he said.
The high winds and lashing rain left thousands without power all over the mountains of northwest and north central Georgia. Stacey Fields, director of public relations for Amicalola EMC, said after the storm passed on Tuesday a week ago, the utility cooperative had just over 23,000 consumers in a multicounty area without power.
“As we began the assessment and repair of damages, our crews had to cut through debris at almost every location before they could begin,” she noted on the morning after the storm. “This made the restoration effort more labor intensive, thereby slowing the restoration effort down some. However, we restored roughly 10,000 meters in approximately the first 12 hours.”
Fields went on to report that by mid-morning of July 31, AEMC still had 13,000 members without power at 243 separate locations — with almost 8,500 of those in Gilmer County, their largest service area. At that time, it was reported 40 utility poles had been snapped with many of them having to be replaced. She expected even more to be discovered broken as crews advanced into stricken areas.
A post on the amicalolaemc.com website for July 31 stated, “Help is on the way from Coweta-Fayette EMC, Habersham EMC, Planters EMC, Sand Mountain Electric, Snapping Shoals EMC, Washington EMC, and Pike crews from Altamaha, Canoochee and Satilla EMC.”
When asked for an update Monday, Fields replied by email, “All outages were restored by Friday afternoon.”
‘Too dangerous’
Deputy Chief Jason Bryant of Gilmer Fire said the storm got “significantly more severe” as it crossed the Murray-Gilmer County line around 6:30 p.m. The department had already activated its Emergency Operations Center (EOC).
“We immediately started receiving calls of trees down everywhere, and the storms got bad enough that we halted all operations in the county that were nonemergency calls,” he said. “For about 25 to 30 minutes during the height of the storm, we weren’t responding to any ‘trees down’ or ‘wires down’ (calls) at that point because it was too dangerous. But we were still responding to 911 calls of people sick, people hurt, car wrecks, stuff like that.”
After the storm cleared, a list was made of the numerous flash points that had developed and needed to be addressed, Bryant revealed. He was asked if one section of the county was impacted more than others.
“The Boardtown area seemed to be the hardest hit area,” he replied. “We had a lot of trees down up there. We actually had an EMS call that it took us a significant amount of time to get to because the entrance was a 2-mile road that was blocked by around 20 to 30 trees that were down and involved with power lines. We tried to go in on foot but were unable to, so we had to wait for Amicalola (EMC) to get there and help us (clear it). That was the most significant thing we had to deal with.”
Bryant said the emergency call was not a result of the weather.
“We didn’t have any storm-related injuries, and we had a couple of wrecks without injuries,” he reported of the storm’s wrath. “I think at the final count we had 68 direct, storm-related responses for the night, and that was between trees on houses, trees down, wires down and things like that.”
Fire and EMA personnel worked all night cutting trees out of roads, Bryant added, and the county road department also deployed. As well, the state Department of Transportation was handling the highways in a “joint effort of everybody helping each other out and doing the best we could — Amicalola was absolutely tapped out with everything going on with significant delays of wires down, but they work as fast as they can and we get it.”
When asked if a tornado was possibly embedded in the storm because of the widespread damage, he replied there were no indications of a twister.
‘Very thankful’
In the Pleasant Valley community of southeast Gilmer, Cindy Chastain suspected the storm was more than “straight line winds.”
“It was rough,” she said. “We have trees down all over the farm and lots of fencing to repair. Matt and Luke (husband and son) cut trees for about two hours (Tuesday) night so Aunt Gail (Chastain) would be able to get out of her driveway. They have continued to remove trees from the fence. It also lifted up the roof of one of our chicken houses enough that water was blown inside. The roof went back down, but will need some repair. We had a guy on the roof (Thursday) re-screwing it down.”
Chastain said she witnessed the storm from “the confines of my she shed” with her daughter-in-law and infant granddaughter sheltered in a bathroom inside their home.
“Luckily there were no cattle in the barn, because it’s pretty much destroyed,” she said. “The cows were still contained inside the pasture, but had gone to higher ground and the farthest point from where the storm came through. The rain was so heavy you couldn’t see 20 feet out, and the wind was very loud.”
Matt and Luke Chastain began searching for the herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle immediately, and when they pulled their Kubota buggy with a feeder into the pasture, all the cows came home.
After the storm passed, Chancey and his neighbors discovered the road into their subdivision near Whitepath Golf Course was covered with trees.
“We got out chain saws and cut enough so that people could get through,” he said. “Then my neighbor’s generator wouldn’t start, so we stayed up till midnight working on that! So it was an eventful evening. But things can be replaced. We’re very thankful, because it could have been much worse.”