The storm that ripped through Dade Tuesday afternoon with reported 70-mph winds has played hell with county roads and roofs. Billy Massengale, chief of the county roads gang, said this morning that trees are down all over but worse in some areas than other.
"If you stretched a string across Sand Mountain and Lookout, you could tell where the heart of the storm come through," he said. "It's basically a straight line."
Massengale said that as far as he knew, all roads are now open but warned it might be best to stay off Slygo Road, where he and his crews are currently working. "We're having to take up both lanes with machines and trucks to try to haul it off," he reported by cellphone.
Massengale said there had been blockages on Dugan Loop, Creek Road, Sarah Chapel, Wall Circle, Murphy Hollow, Burkhalter Gap--the list goes on and on. Well over 100 trees are down, he said. "Last night we started about 6 o'clock and cut until 2:00 or 2:30," he said. "We got two or three hours of sleep and started over again this morning."
Trees are also down across the county in people's yards, said Massengale. He estimates it will be at least two weeks before all the damage is cleared away.
Alex Case, Dade's Emergency Services manager and incidentally the mayor of Trenton, said he'd checked out about seven homes with bad roof damage but that no casualties or injuries had been reported in Dade.
The worst damage, said Case, seemed to be in the north part of the county. "It's kind of a straight line from New Home," he said. A home on Sims Drive off Creek Road had lost a quarter of its roof, he said, and other nearby homes also had extensive roof damage. A residence on the 3300 block of Slygo Road had lost roofs on two outbuildings, said the 911 boss.
The Dade County Board of Education reported that county schools had opened as usual this morning with no interruption. There are colloquial reports of power outages around Dade County, but with most regional offices shut down in Northwest Georgia, Georgia Power proved impregnable to The Planet's request for information about the scope of outages or damage to power lines.
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