National Weather Service surveying possible tornado damage in Houston County

Houston County Fire Chief Chris Stoner was expected to meet with the National Weather Service on Wednesday to assess storm damage from what he expects was a tornado that wreaked havoc on the back end of Statham’s Landing.

“We’re pretty positive it was (a tornado) just based off the pictures I got yesterday,” Stoner said. “I actually went up and flew with GSP (Georgia State Patrol helicopter) over it yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon and looked at from the air and submitted all that to the weather service so that got the ball rolling with them,” Stoner said.

National Weather Service representatives are expected to be on site to conduct a preliminary assessment and determine a storm path.

“We should know something in the next day or so,” Stoner said.

As many as 30 homes may have suffered damage that appears to be limited primarily to Statham’s Landing in Warner Robins, he said.

“We’ve got all of the structures assessed over there,” Stoner said. “I don’t have a total number in front of me right now but it’s between 20 and 30 houses that received significant damage from windows blown out to parts of the roof removed all the way down to the second floor of the houses and the first floor of the houses in some of them.”

A lot of vegetative debris from damaged trees littered the area. Trees were also downed in the Bonaire area but have been cleared, he said.

“The biggest thing for most people is Old Hawkinsville Road is going to be closed for possibly up to two weeks at Cullen Drive,” Stoner said. “Georgia Power had a transmission line that came down yesterday (Tuesday) in the storm so they’ve got crews coming in to try to reset several transmission poles and that’s a pretty lengthy undertaking.”

Barriers have been set up on Old Hawkinsville Road on either side of the closure from Cullen Road to Forest Mill Drive, he said. The road is accessible from Ga. 96 and from Ga. 247 and Sandy Run Road.

“All the roadways are open except for that one little section of Old Hawksville,” Stoner said.

Just over a dozen power outages remained early Wednesday morning at the end of Cullen Road and along Old Hawkinsvile Road.

“They were able to get a lot of it restored yesterday (Tuesday), and thankfully a lot that area, besides the high power transmission line, is underground power,” Stoner said. “That was a blessing, too.

“If it had been overhead power, we likely couldn’t have gotten in there as fast as we did.”

No injuries have been reported.

“I certainly feel for everybody out there,” Stoner said. “But thankfully no one was injured and they’ll be able to recover from it and rebuild.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 10:25 AM.