News
Greensboro official: We dodged a bullet
Journal Photo by Bruce Chapman
Thursday night's storms damaged this building at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market.
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Published: May 9, 2008
Updated: 05/09/2008 03:32 pm
GREENSBORO - One man was killed and three injured when storms ripped through part of Guilford County just north of Interstate 40 and Sandy Ridge Road, but officials said today that it could have been much worse.
The powerful storm system that swept through the Southeast and the mid-Atlantic states late Thursday and into early this morning produced two tornados.
Donald Ray Needham, 51, of Jackson Springs, died when his truck overturned in a parking lot at the Triad Industrial Park, just west of Greensboro, authorities said. They said three others were injured, one when the storm knocked down a wall at a distributing business, and two others when their vehicles flipped off the road.
In Greensboro, some homes and businesses on the outskirts of town were damaged, and two FedEx airplanes were pitched off the tarmac and into an airport construction site. No one was injured at the airport.
And while officials scoured through wreckage when daylight arrived today, they found no new injuries or fatalities.
"I thought we were going to come back to something a lot worse than what we have out there," said David Douglas, assistant chief for the Greensboro Fire Department. "It could have been much worse than it was."
National Weather Service officials confirmed today that a tornado with winds of up to 130 miles per hour was confirmed for the area around Triad Industrial Park. The tornado moved roughly toward the northeast.
During a news conference this morning, Douglas said that roughly 25 percent of the buildings in the affected area - Little Santee Road, Triad Drive, Capital Drive and Standard Drive – sustained moderate to severe damage. Crews conducting the assessments found no victims.
"We really kind of dodged a bullet," Douglas said.
Earlier today, authorities began allowing business owners to enter the part of the area near Sandy Ridge Road and Interstate 40 after inspecting buildings in an area where a tornado touched down.
People from businesses with the least amount of damage were allowed in first.
But Chip Roth, a spokesman for the Teamsters Local 391, and Jim Hart, the manager of Boise Cascade, expected to be among the last to get into the area because of the extensive damage and downed power lines.
Roth said that a groundskeeper at the Teamsters building, on Teamsters Way, said that the building had extensive water damage inside and that the roof is ripped away.
"I think it's in question whether we can salvage the building," Roth said.
Hart managed to get onto his property on Capital Drive early this morning before the area was sealed off by authorities. Boise Cascade distributes building materials, and Hart said that the materials stacked outside had been strewn all over. He said it was too dark for him to see whether there was any damage to the building.
Alan Perdue, emergency-services director for Guilford County, said that the county was in the process of getting the area declared a disaster area.
Law-enforcement officials set up a staging area at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market. Trees are down at the market and one building was damaged, said Roger Frazier, the assistant chief of the Colfax Fire Department.
Frazier said that thousands of trees are down in an area that stretches from the intersection of Gallimore Dairy Road and Sandy Ridge Road to I-40 - and that's not even in the area where the most severe damage occurred.
Frazier said he went out last night about 11:30, when the storm had passed and calls of damage started coming in.
What he saw shocked him.
"There are lots of trees down and damage to buildings," said Frazier, 48. "It is probably the worst storm I have seen come through here in my lifetime."
Frazier said he only had scattered branches down at his house, farther south, off Sandy Ridge Road.
He said he received no reports of injuries in the Colfax Fire District, which stretches from the Greensboro city limits to the Forsyth County line.
At Zion Hill United Methodist Church, on Sandy Ridge Road just south of I-40, the winds ripped off roof shingles and ripped siding from the steeple. The wind broke big branches off a pine tree and broke stained-glass windows on the south side of the church. Church member Darrell Hagan said "it could have been a lot worse."
"There's nothing that can't be fixed, and we are having church on Sunday," Hagan said.
Susie Manuel was in her mobile home on Farrington Road, just off Sandy Ridge Road, watching television last night around 11 when she heard that there was a storm in Clemmons. Her husband, Ricky, was asleep in a bedroom at one end of the trailer and her adult son, Jeremy, was asleep in his room at the other end.
A moment after her satellite TV service went out, she knew she and her family were in trouble.
"I heard this whistling sound, and right then I knew it was coming this way," she said. "I heard this roar that got louder and louder."
She yelled for her husband and son, and all three hurried for her son's bathroom because it has no windows.
Manuel thought she was going to die.
"The house was going a little bit side-to-side, and the floor was going up and down," Manuel said. For 35 frightening minutes, the three huddled in the bathtub, trying to calm their Chihuahua, Sophie, who was shaking.
"It was an awful roar, loud, and we never heard one tree fall," Manuel said.
When things got quiet, the family went outside and found that their home was nearly surrounded by oak trees that had fallen during the storm. Two huge oak trees lay in the front yard, and two in the back, but only one tree brushed the house, causing minor damage. Amazingly, two other large oaks stood in the back yard. Had they fallen, they would have smashed the house.
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N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
The Downtown Summer Music Series will begin on Thursday. Ed Bumgardner talks to some of the organizers of the Downtown Jazz lineup, in which a form of music known as "smooth jazz" will play a more prominent role this year.
Thursday's relish stories will appear in the Entertainment section.
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