Local

Dream home lost as tornado hits property a second time

GORDON COUNTY, Ga. — "It's like a bomb," said Paul Drosness as he surveyed the destruction in and around his Gordon County home. "An atomic bomb went off in this area.  I've never seen anything like it in my life."

The tornado that ripped through parts of Bartow and Gordon counties on Wednesday nearly flattened Drosness' hilltop home off Union Grove Church Road.  Most of his roof is gone, scattered across miles of hilly countryside.

"My life is just upside down right now," Drosness told Channel 2's Richard Elliot.  "I don't know which way to go."

Drosness purchased the property years ago with the intention of building his dream house there.  That dream got put on hold when a tornado blew through the property two years ago, damaging trees. 

So Drosness decided to wait to build.  He just finished building that dream house six months ago, a house that now lies in ruins.  He's hesitant to try building again.

"It seems like they haven't had tornadoes here ever," said Drosness.  "All of a sudden, two in two years.  So we're just going to have to rebuild and pray another one doesn't come through."

Luckily, no one was home when the tornado hit, except his dog, Max.  The dog survived but hid under a couch until they could coax him out.

The tornado also flattened the forests on both sides of the house, turning them into matchsticks.

"I mean, it's just horrible," said Dylan Drosness, Paul's son.

Dylan rushed home from school when he got word of the tornado. 

"Until you see something like this, I mean, you really can't compare it to anything else," he said.