Volunteers clean up Warner Robins after confirmed tornado

Angela Driver did not need National Weather Service confirmation to realize she rode out a tornado early Friday.

As a tree service cleared two large, fallen oak trees from her yard off Green Street early Monday morning, Driver told her harrowing story.

"When I came out and had seen everything, I was just amazed, amazed, shook up, terrified, never want to experience it again," Driver said over a chain saw's droning in her backyard.

Just before 7:45 a.m. Friday, Driver huddled with her young son inside her walk-in closet, the only spot safe from windows.

"I heard really, really loud whirling. My roof was clattering and my house was shaking," said Driver, who refused to come out until well after the storm had passed and her neighbor reassured her.

"She said, 'God's hand was on you. It's just the mercy of God that kept you,'" Driver said, still almost breathless describing the terror she experienced.

Sunday night, the National Weather Service confirmed that a twister cut a 4.2-mile swath through Warner Robins just after 7:30 a.m. on April Fools' Day.

The survey team's report showed an EF-1 tornado touched down at 7:42 a.m. about a half-mile northeast of Centerville and lifted about a half-mile north of Warner Robins.

The twister initially took out trees along Sentry Oaks Drive, briefly gained steam with up to 90 mph winds and tore across Napier Avenue, Fisher Street and Carter Circle.

Most homes were spared major structural damage, except where trees crashed on top of houses, like Driver's at the corner of Briardale Avenue, about a block from Northside High School.

As Gray Brothers Tree Service cleared her yard, volunteers from Bethlehem United Methodist Church in Bremen were working around the corner to clear a fallen tree from Tammy Crowder's backyard.

"It's been wonderful. They come out, they took that tree down in no time," Crowder said, as the team carried logs to the street. "I appreciate them coming out. They didn't have to. They used their own time to come out and take care of it for me."

Had it not been for the men, that tree might have sat for weeks, Crowder said.

"It's nice to be able to contribute some help to them," said George Dent, an 84-year-old retiree.

"It's good to do something for people like this."

Shortly after 8 a.m. Monday, Houston County Emergency Management Agency Director Jimmy Williams was hosting volunteer registration at the EMA building at 200 Carl Vinson Parkway.

"We still have about 10 to 15 major damaged houses, and we still have some other damage to other structures," Williams said.

Tax assessors were scouring neighborhoods to document the extent of the damage. Williams does not expect to have an updated damage report from the office until Tuesday afternoon. James Moore, who heads the Houston County tax assessor's office, could not be reached for comment late Monday afternoon.

LOTS OF HELP

Those who evacuated their homes have received Red Cross disaster assistance or help from insurance companies.

Joseph Molyson, the Houston County EMA's disaster volunteer coordinator, was accepting help only from organized groups already certified to work disaster scenes.

"If people want to come and help volunteer, they need to be in an established organization where they receive training in a particular skill," Molyson said. "They may already have a skill already, but that organization they join is going to kind of hone their skills and get them directed toward disaster relief work they need to do."

Many churches have disaster response teams, Molyson said.

Mike Yoder, with the North Georgia United Methodist Disaster Response Team, was reviewing certification and liability paperwork before volunteers were dispatched to neighborhoods.

"Checking that they are trained so there will be no accidents out on the scene," Yoder said.

Records are kept of the crews' hours in case a disaster declaration allows for federal reimbursement of expenses, he said.

Only chain saw crews were needed Monday due to the nature of the storm damage.

The twister weakened slightly as it tracked to the east-northeast and brought down trees between Watson Boulevard and Green Street before crossing North Davis Drive.

The storm snapped a large oak tree at Duke Avenue and North Sixth Street, and then the tornado apparently lifted or dissipated, as no damage was seen east toward Robins Air Force Base.

Surveyors have yet to determine whether a tornado hit the base, where a wind gust was clocked at nearly 84 mph at the north end of the air field, the NWS said in the storm report.

The base is a separate entity outside of Houston County EMA's jurisdiction, Williams said.

An earlier Robins Air Force Base release attributed damage to straight-line winds.

"We were lucky," Williams said.

At Robins, hundreds of people -- airmen and civilians -- walked the flight line Monday morning, looking for anything that could cause damage to aircraft.

"We're looking for any kind of loose debris out here -- rocks, pebbles, metal objects -- things that can get sucked into an aircraft's engines and destroy them," Tony Larkin of the 560th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron said in a base statement.

The International City and the base did not fare as well on April 30, 1953, when a 100 mph tornado sliced through the heart of city and base, killing 18 people, injuring 350 others and leaving more than 1,000 people homeless.

The twister did more than $10 million worth of damage, leveling dozens of houses in about 12 minutes, tearing a swath about 1,000 feet wide in Georgia's fourth deadliest tornado in history.

Friday's line of storms also spawned an EF-1 tornado that touched down in eastern Twiggs County at 8:50 a.m. and cut a 2.4-mile path toward Allentown.

Two doublewide mobile homes were damaged, with destruction consistent with an EF-1 tornado with maximum winds of about 95 mph.

That twister crossed Interstate 16 and cut a 300-yard path of downed trees on both sides of the highway.

The storm continued along Ga. 112 and snapped several trees just west of U.S. 80 before lifting about 8:55 a.m.

Information from The Telegraph archives contributed to this report. To contact writer Liz Fabian, call 744-4303 and follow her on Twitter

This story was originally published April 4, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Volunteers clean up Warner Robins after confirmed tornado ."