Storms blast county

By Doug Russell, News Editor

Ron Treadway was expecting a nice, quiet evening at home; maybe watch a little television as he listened to the storm raging outside Wednesday evening.
Just relax.

But not for long.

“I was just sitting there watching TV, and all of a sudden I heard a BOOM like lightning had hit the tree beside my house and smoke started coming up from behind my TV.

“I liked to have had a heart attack.”

The lights went out. The TV went off. And the storm continued, with winds blasting to 80 miles and hour.

Treadway thinks lightning struck a 60-foot spruce beside his Perry Circle home, shot down the trunk and along a limb, then arced to a corner of his house. Burn marks are evident from the top to bottom of that corner, as are brown leaves along the limb he thinks the lightning traveled.

“I finally got my TV working, but the satellite is shot,” Treadway said. “The wires are burned completely through. It blew out my satellite receiver, VCR, central heat and air — I don’t know what all.”

The storm that spawned the lightning blast also dumped heavy rain and large amounts of hail on the county.

“We had one little out building blown over, and some limbs down, but no other damage that I know of,” said Emergency Management Director John Berryman. “A deputy, we don’t know who, supposedly said there was a tornado up around the dam, but none of my spotters saw it.

“A lot of people think that when there’s debris there’s a tornado, but all the wind damage we had was from straight line winds, not a tornado.”

The winds were even stronger in Longtown, where an estimated 117 mph gust blew away a boat and camper storage building, knocking out electricity to the area. Debris from the 20-unit building broke two windows from, and knocked two holes in the roof of, a nearby home and also damaged a storage building 30 yards behind the home, according to Craig Hunt, assistant chief of the No. 9 Area Volunteer Fire Department.

“It was a mess,” he said.

Winds toppled trees, ripped away limbs and even overturned some stones at the Quinton city cemetery, according to Police Chief John Barbee. “I was filling up my patrol car and that wind tried to knock me down,” he said. “Over at the cemetery there were big hundred year old trees knocked down. It was bad.”

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