No injuries or structure damage in western Gilmer, eastern Murray
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The Woodring Branch Road access to Carters Lake off Highway 282 was blocked for campers and boaters for awhile last week after turbulent storms raked Gilmer and Murray counties on the night of July 20-21.
Mark Rollins was sitting on the porch of his house on Lakeland Drive last Thursday afternoon when the sky darkened prematurely.
“It started around 5 o’clock, and I was thinking maybe my squash will get some rain today,” he said.
However, it was more than rain.
“Pretty soon I saw limbs start flying by and had stuff hitting the windows of my house, but it didn’t break any of them,” said Rollins, who lives off Ridgeway Church Road near the Murray County line. “The bad part was I had my phone out trying to record and didn’t have the video (function) on! And the weird part about it was it lasted for a long time, not like it was over in five minutes.”
Rollins said there were so many trees down on his property he couldn’t count them all.
“This is a mess,” he said while standing in the middle of the road Friday morning. “I think there’s thousands of trees down out here. Every time you turn your head, there’s another tree down. I’ve seen a lot of storms up here, but nothing nearly this bad.”
The late Thursday afternoon storm knocked down trees by the hundreds or thousands, at least if counting the ones sawed off of Highway 282 for several miles in western Gilmer County. Fortunately, however, neither injuries nor damage to property were reported, authorities said.
Jan and Shelia Brown had been pontooning on Carters Lake since around lunchtime Friday when they began getting weather alerts on their phones around 4:30.
“We had dodged a little bit of rain, but other than that it was a pretty day on the lake,” said Jan Brown. “So we just came in and tied the boat up and were sitting at our (camping) place when it hit. We were sitting at the front of our camper on the deck and watching the water. We happened to look back toward the dam and could see the sky was just black and heading our way. We had just enough time to put our chairs up.”
Inside their camper at Woodring Lake campground, it got a little tense.
“It reminded me of times in Florida when the water whitecapped into waves,” he said of the view of the lake outside the window.
Shelia Brown said she told her husband, “I don’t want to roll off in this water in this tin can we’re sitting in, so if it gets to shaking much more I’m going to the truck where I can see where I’m going! It looked like the ocean out there!”
Power was knocked out overnight in the campground and in several nearby communities in the path of the storm. Initially, the Browns were stuck when they tried to get out Friday morning and head back home to Chatsworth.
“Woodring Branch Road is so littered with leaves and branches it looks like a dirt road,” Jan Brown said by cellphone as they were leaving the camping area. “You can’t even see the pavement for all of it laying there. There’s no twisted trees or anything, so there wasn’t any circulating winds. It was just pure-force winds. There was one big pine tree that had a 6-and-a-half to 8-foot root in the ground, and the wind just lifted it all the way out.”
Eventually, the lake access road was cleared.
Rollins spoke with Gilmer’s chief of public safety, Keith Kucera, who said he had no idea how long the power would be off in July’s humid climate.
“There’s at least a half-dozen or more power crew trucks parked back at the church,” he said. “We don’t know if it was straight-line winds (because) they have to do an evaluation of what they’re able to see. It was a big (storm) cell. We’re still trying to get the damage assessment. We’re working with the National Weather Service. We came out here and flew a drone a few minutes ago, and we’re popping the drone back up in a couple more places to try and get an assessment of what it looks like. We’ve not gotten any reports of trees on houses, and no fatalities or injuries that we’ve been notified about.
“Other than trees down in other places — like Coosawattee (River Resort) — there hasn’t been any significant damage. This west end of 282 on the west end (of Gilmer) and the east side of Murray on 282 seems to have taken the biggest hit from what we can tell so far.”
Dwain Bain, Murray County’s Fire/EMA chief, said he had spoken with David Nadler of the National Weather Service Friday morning.
“He was telling me there was what appeared to be straight-line winds that knocked down several trees and stuff around the (Highway) 282 area and closed it down,” he related.
Stacey Fields, director of public relations for Amicalola EMC, reported late Friday afternoon the co-op had 26,000 members without power system-wide, with 2,667 of those in Gilmer County.
“By 8:30 a.m. (Friday), that number was down to 1,605,” she said. “Currently (4:40 p.m.), there are 1,013.”
Earlier in the day Friday, Fields said she received information about Gilmer County detailing there were broken utility poles and multiple lines down along Highway 382, multiple trees on lines and lines down on Highway 282, and also multiple trees on lines and lines down on the eastern side of the county in the Clear Creek area.
Meanwhile, the Browns aren’t totally giving up.
“We’re headed home now and will maybe come back tomorrow and pick up some of the pieces, go back out on the boat and enjoy the rest of the weekend — hopefully,” he said.