Afternoon storms cause damage to homes across metro

ATLANTA — Bartow County firefighters credit quick thinking neighbors for alerting to a house fire before it got out of control.
 
"We had a pretty good lightning storm coming through at the time. A lot of lightning strikes in the area," said Battalion Chief Sandy Turner with the Bartow County Fire Department.
 
"All happened quick, adrenaline going and everything. It was good," said neighbor Heather Goreman.
 
Heather Goreman says at first she thought the bolt of lightning hit her home.
 
"When the lightning struck it got so bright," she told Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh.
 
"Well I was sitting out back and all of a sudden it went 'pow,'" said Robert Goreman, Heather's father.
 
Soon the Goreman's saw smoke billowing over from their neighbors on Fairfield Road in Cartersville.  From the street one could see where the flames shot through the roof.
 
"We got to get their dogs out," Heather Goreman said.
 
They called 911, then, Heather says she, her dad, and another neighbor ran around back and kicked in the door. They rescued the family's four dogs. They didn't stop there.
 
"We started to get like the computer, anything that would have been important, put in a basket, put in their car," Heather Goreman said.
 
There was another close call for a family's dogs in Cobb County.
 
A pop-up storm took down a massive oak on Mercer Road in Symrna. No one was home except the dogs, which luckily only got wet when the branches splintered the ceiling.
 
The man renting the home allowed Kavanaugh inside the home to see where the limbs crashed through, leaving a trail of soaked insulation.
 
He says a neighbor alerted him to the damage to his home as well.
 
"It's so close to home, you're not thinking. You're just doing whatever you feel is right," Heather Goreman said.

WSBTV