KimberlyJames
Joined: 03/16/2008
Posts: 1

Recent Comments by KimberlyJames
Tornadoes cause fatalities in Northwest Georgia
03/16/2008 06:13:27 PM
Hi all. I was coming up 75 and was called by my boyfriend and told to get off the highway and not go up Emerson Highway by the airport that i usually take yesterday. I was on the way to my parents house. I sat at my grandmothers in Acworth for about 15 minutes, and then left and headed to Emerson Hwy and Old Alabama. I quickly realized that my boyfriend more than likely saved my life by calling me. The devastation that I saw when i got there.....saddened me. Homes, Farmhouses, locations I had always associated with what is usually for me a peaceful and beautiful country drive to my parents on the weekends in Rockmart. The one thing that I saw, that I always knew this area to be...is neighbors, friends, strangers (rarely any there), all helping and looking for people and things. On old Alabama Rd, a nice quiet little nook of a road usually covered by trees, no longer covered at all. Trees snapped like twigs, and pulled from the red clay by the roots, tractors, cars, roofs, all thrown into homes and fields. Up by Plant Bowen, large transformers carrying electricity toppled and bent like they were nothing. Power lines down and trees dangling from the ones that weren't down. i looked to my left and right and stared straight into the tornado path. The trees pushed aside in both directions showing the destructive path the monster took. I stopped at the cute house on the corner and spoke to the home owners of a little house i have always loved, and found that a camper across the street from them that was for sale ( the same camper my mom and i were looking at two days before), had been slung into their front yard and wrapped around a tree there. They were lucky, the tree saved them. The camper, just pieces of a camper now. I was told they looked up the hill, and saw the tornado coming. The house around the corner wasn't so lucky. The highest on the hill, it's roof and other parts are completely gone. It looks like it picked up the whole roof, and placed it elsewhere. All of the trees again snapped or pulled from the roots. A doctor we all have used, his house destroyed.

I was rerouted down Euharlee, to find more trees down, massive flooding, and eventually ended up on Rockmart Highway from the other direction and coming back down, only to find that the road to the church I went to as a child blocked, and to find out that two people we all know had perished. It was a glum drive to my mothers house. All of a sudden the sun was out, and it was very hot. My brother, a Cobb County Fireman, had called me all through this, between his many runs because of the storm. He was worried. I had been driving four hours, in a usually one and a half or two hour drive. I then get a call again from my boyfriend in Atlanta, that he has packed some things, and ran out of the apartment. He had been on the balcony, and looked to see a massive black mass coming close. It scared a usually unscarred person. He ended up fine, but a 10 mile wide cloud or tornado had hit Atlanta once again.

My trip back was just as devastating, the aftermath driving through horrid. I am happy my boyfriend was smart enough to call me, and save me, and I will never forget the air, the clouds, the destruction. I have photos from during and after. The ones I have, were only where i could get to. The devastation is ten times worse than my photos.