News
State begins assessing storm damage
Journal Photo by David Rolfe
William Lanning, right, and his neighbor Joe Freeman pick through the remains of what had been Lanning's bedroom as a reported tornado tore through their neighborhood on Underpass Road near Advance last night. Lanning and his wife, Cindy Lanning, had been in the bedroom when the wind struck, tearing off the roof and collapsing their room into the garage below. "I didn't hear a thing," Lanning said. "I didn't hear the dreaded train." Lanning and his wife escaped with minor cuts and bruises.
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Published: May 9, 2008
Updated: 05/09/2008 11:05 am
GREENSBORO - Gov. Mike Easley today dispatched damage assessment teams comprised of state and local officials to Guilford, Forsyth, and Davie counties to begin the process of assessing damage from the storm that swept through the area late Thursday and earlier today.
The storm killed one person and injured three others in the Triad last night.
It was part of a system of severe storms swept across the Southeast, damaging homes and businesses in at least three other states.
A man was killed in the Triad Industrial Park, just north of Interstate 40 and Sandy Ridge Road, in the area where the worst damage occurred. A law-enforcement official said this morning that the man was outside the truck when it blew over on him.
During a news conference this morning, Assistant Fire Chief David 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," said David Douglas, the assistant fire chief in Greensboro.
Authorities will begin 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.
The storm also knocked down a wall at a distributing business, sending one person to the hospital, said Alan Perdue, emergency services director for Guilford County. Two other people were hurt while in vehicles, but details were not immediately available, Perdue said. None of the injuries was considered life threatening.
Perdue said that Guilford 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.
Roads have been closed in Clemmons and many Duke Energy customers in Davie and Forsyth counties remain without power.
The storm touched down in Advance on Underpass Road about 11 last night.
William Lanning had just gone to bed when his wife, Cindy, came upstairs to tell him that a tornado was headed their way and they needed to get the children to a safe place.
He stood up to put his pants on and in that moment the "closet blew up and the wind filled the room and everything went dark," he said.
The master bedroom extends over the garage. The wind blew the roof off and the floor beneath the room collapsed, with the bedroom landing in the garage, crushing the cars.
Cindy Lanning was rolled up inside the bedroom carpet. William Lanning was cut and bruised.
From the garage, the only way back into the main part of the house was outside. They stumbled around in the dark until they found a door to the house. Their son let them in. The children were unharmed.
"I didn't hear a thing," Lanning said this morning. "I didn't hear the dreaded train."
Rodney Miller, the chief of the Advance Fire Department, said this morning that the storm damaged homes and trees in a one-mile radius. He said that one person in the region had minor injuries. About 6,500 households in Davie County are without power.
The city/county Office of Emergency Management said this morning that Frye Bridge Road in Clemmons will be closed at Cooper Road and at Loop Road. Dock Davis Road at Idols Road is also blocked.
The roads are not expected to be re-opened until Saturday morning. Residents are the only people that will be allowed to enter the Frye Bridge Road area, Emergency Management officials.
As of 11 a.m., 2,246 Duke Energy customers were without power in Forsyth County. Duke Energy reported on its Web site that 7,934 Davie County customers and 1,073 outages in Guilford County.
The storm caused extensive damage to Hanes Park, said Tim Grant, the city's director of recreation and parks.
"Right now it's just a muddy mess," Grant said.
The park's clay tennis courts, which were recently resurfaced, are likely destroyed by flooding, Grant said, and the hard tennis courts may also be badly damaged.
The Joe White Tennis Center was flooded and the water washed away the sand to the park's playground.
The center has a tennis shop inside, run by Randy Pate Tennis, a company in Statesville that has the city contract to manage the courts.
Employees are out checking on other city parks, greenways and trails, Grant said. They're also clearing drains and brush, preparing for the possibility of another storm this weekend.
"Right now we don't know of any other (major) damage besides Hanes Park," Grant said.
Damage estimates for Hanes Park are still being tallied and will depend in large part on damage to the courts.
"It could be $60,000," Grant said. "If the hard courts are damaged, it could be more than that. It could be $100,000 — we just don't know at this point."
There was also flooding on South Main Street, between the Gateway and the entrance to the N.C. School of the Arts.
Red mud coated South Main near Waughtown Road and some nearby business owners spent part the morning pumping out water and drying carpets.
Tim Falls of Falls Automotive Service on South Main was one of them.
"I got about 15 gallons from the front of the building," Falls said. "The whole building probably had an inch or two of water. This is probably the worst I've seen it."
Jan Jackson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's office in Blacksburg, Va., said there were three preliminary reports of tornadoes in the area. One was in Clemmons, the other two in western Guilford County. Investigators will be in the area today to try to confirm the tornado reports, Jackson said.
An apparent tornado also wrecked a shopping area in Mississippi and strong winds flipped a mobile home in Alabama. In south-central Tennessee, at least four homes and a few barns were damaged.
Reports of damaged houses, fallen trees, flooding and road accidents came in last night from Surry County in the north, Guilford County in the east and Davie County in the south.
Weather officials reported winds as high as 60 mph, and at least one tornado in Clemmons.
WGHP/FOX8 reported wind shears at 103 mph when the storm moved through Davie and Forsyth counties.
In Guilford County, three tractor-trailers were blown off eastbound Interstate 40 near N.C. 68 shortly after 11:30 p.m., the N.C. Highway Patrol reported.
The storms started marching through about 8 p.m. and were still hitting some areas of the Triad at midnight. The weather service reported that 4 inches of rain fell on southern Forsyth County by that time; 3 inches fell in the area around Smith Reynolds Airport in Winston-Salem.
In Surry County, a line of storms raced through Elkin, Dobson and Mount Airy. The conditions were right for tornados. Some residents reported seeing at least three funnel clouds, but there was no confirmed touch down of a tornado, said John Shelton, Surry's director of emergency services.
"We were very fortunate," he said. "It was a very dangerous situation."
There were trees down on roadways and power lines. Most of the damage was limited to outbuildings. There were no reports of any damage to major structures, Shelton said.
Robert Stonefield, a meteorologist with the weather service, said that strong winds knocked down power lines in Yadkinville.
Hail and-tornado storms aren't unheard of in the spring, said Barrett Smith, a weather-service meteorologist. But they aren't common, either. He said that there are usually about 10 to 20 a year, on average.
"They don't happen all the time, but the fact that it is moving through Clemmons, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, it probably will enhance the damage because it is moving through such a populated area," Smith said.
The weather forecast for today includes a chance of showers and thunderstorms before 2 p.m., turning mostly cloudy with temperatures in the high 70s.
The storm system that rolled through North Carolina last night began earlier in the week in the Midwest when cold and warm air combined to form a front, Smith said.
"This is the time of year when we get this type of thing," he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( jeannemac ) on May 9, 2008 at 10:10 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Why is the picture of a woman in Alabama? Isn't this the website of the WINSTON-SALEM journal? There are plenty of pictures of damage that was done in and around WINSTON-SALEM.
This is my visit to the new website. I came here to see about the storm damage in WINSTON-SALEM. There appears to be very little coverage of the storms in WINSTON-SALEM.
Please try to have more relevant local coverage.
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