Clean up underway in Polk, Bartow counties following severe storms, tornadoes

CEDARTOWN, Ga. — Neighbors in west and north Georgia are assessing the damage after a line of severe storms moved through. Some cells even produced tornadoes across the area.

Channel 2 Action News had a team of reporters spread out across the areas hit hardest.

“I mean it was hailing like hell. And I was thinking to myself it’s going to come and tornado,” Randy Johnson told Channel 2′s Chris Jose.

A tree crushed Jackson’s home off Lees Chapel Road and flattened his pick-up truck in the driveway in Polk County. Johnson said his wife had just returned home from the grocery store around 1 p.m. Thursday before the storms hit.

“Just got off the porch, just walked into the house, and got in the back hallway. And there it was,” he said.

An Acworth family let Channel 2′s Alison Mastrangelo inside their home after a tree crashed through the roof.

Allison and Evan Coole said they were sitting on the sofa just a few minutes before they rushed down to the basement and the tree crashed through their living room .

Earlier in the afternoon, Jose visited another area in Polk County after the first line of storms that rolled through.

“We have a roadway with a lot of residents, older residents there who are trapped. Both sides of the road are blocked,” said Polk County Deputy Chief Jonathan Blackmon.

Deputies teamed up with an inmate work detail to clear the roads. Blackmon went inside homes and made some rescues.

“She only had one way in and one way out. One of my deputies came out with a chainsaw. And we cut the tree out of the way to get her out.”

The sheriff’s office shared cell phone video of storms with rotating clouds that hit Thursday afternoon.

“We didn’t know which way it was going. We had to watch it. It was circling around us. You could feel the wind change,” Blackmon said.

Now, the focus is on the clean-up. A few thousand homes are without power in parts of west Georgia. The crews are working to restore power and hope to have it fix soon.

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