Betty Mauldin said God woke her up Sunday.
The resident of Forest Place mobile home park in south Macon said it's a miracle she's alive.
Mauldin awoke in bed in the predawn hours because she thought her trailer was falling over. She opened her eyes and saw a tree had crashed through her roof and onto her bed.
As soon as she jumped up, a metal beam from the trailer struck her pillow.
"It's a miracle I didn't get killed," Mauldin said, standing in her bedroom looking at the sun shining through the gaping hole in her roof.
Brothers help south Macon neighbors
Downed trees closed the only road into the mobile home park.
Twin brothers David and Daryl Ord said they weren't going to wait for anyone to rescue them and their stranded neighbors.
The brothers took to the street, chain saws in hand, cutting through trees and branches while other residents dragged debris to the side of the road.
"We didn't want to waste time and stand by and wait," Daryl Ord said. "We have able bodies."
Motel clerk, guests shaken by experience
Elsewhere in Macon, residents said, the storm came through with a fury.
Sheila Harris, the overnight clerk at the Scottish Inn on Romeiser Drive in south Macon, was behind the desk surrounded by glass when the storm hit.
"I was watching the glass move in and out and I moved into the bathroom," she said.
Edward Warre was sleeping at the motel when a loud bang woke him up. The wind, the lightning ... you could hear the trees cracking and the metal bending," said a visibly shaken Warre as he held his 2-year-old daughter in the motel parking lot that was littered with aluminum roofing, glass, insulation and power lines.
Mike Patel, the motel's owner since 1992, said he believes one of his buildings was destroyed.
The roof was ripped off and most of the windows in the front were blown out, allowing rain to pour inside.
"I've never seen damage like this," he said. "Never in my life."
Residents staying at the Econo Lodge across the street didn't fare much better. The aluminum roof of that motel was strewn about for blocks hanging from power lines, wrapped around poles, dangling in trees and scattered in the streets.
Jason Capps, of Jesup, was staying there to do contract work at a paper mill. The motel roof fell on his work truck.
"I was getting up for work," Capps said. "I heard the (tornado) siren go off." Capps said he turned on the news and saw he was in the path of the tornado.
"I ran next door and told my co-worker a tornado is coming and ran back to my room," he said.
As soon as he closed his door, the lights went out, Capps said.
"I looked out the window and could see trees in the air and the roof coming down," he said.
Eddie Horne, another guest at the Econo Lodge, was in town to visit his mother for Mother's Day.
"My mother woke me up and I told her to go back to bed," said Horne, sitting on the curb in the motel parking lot. "I looked out the window and saw my truck was OK, and then (my mother) told me a tornado was coming. I looked out the window again and there goes my Suburban."
Business owners talk about damage
Brothers Mahemdra and Rajesh Patel wore somber faces Sunday as they assessed damage to the Discount Tobacco convenience store and service station they own on the corner of Bloomfield Road and Bloomfield Drive.
The canopy that usually hangs over the gas pumps was mangled and blown into the road, and the gas pumps were falling apart.
"We've got limited damage on our store, but we've got big damage here," Rajesh Patel said pointing to the pumps. "It's very expensive."
Mahemdra Patel estimated it would take $200,000 and four to five weeks to get the service station back up and running.
Luckily, no one was at the store or hurt when the storm blew through, he said.
South Macon woman was ready to make last call to loved ones
On St. Charles Place, not far from the Piggly Wiggly on Rocky Creek Road, Janice Dowling said she figured her house "was about to cave in” when the storm tore over. The top third of a pine tree crushed one end of her roof.
Dowling said when the wind roared, in a panic, the first thing she could think to do was grab her cell phone.
“I guess to call people and tell them goodbye,” she said.
Around her neighborhood, it seemed as though every third or fourth house had a tree or a limb leaning on it or smashed through it. The devastation in the already economically depressed area occurred in a spot where many residents are renters.
“You think people are gonna come back to this? You think they’re gonna wait for people to fix it,” said David Heath, who lives on Frances Drive, just west of Rice Mill Road and the Gold Cup Bowling Center. “It’s gonna end up being a ghost town.”
Telegraph staff writers Harold Goodridge, Joe Kovac Jr. and Jennifer Burk contributed to this report.
Readers' storm photos, Part I (updated Tues. 11:04 a.m.)