Eastman residents say they’ll bounce back after weathering storm

EASTMAN, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – A storm tore through Eastman and surrounding Dodge County Wednesday afternoon, downing a lot of trees and damaging homes.

“It started raining a little bit–and then about 10 minutes later, it started coming down hard,” said Eastman resident Mark Stokes.

It went from simple rain to a race to-your-closet storm quickly.

“I was actually trying to video it, and my daddy hollered at me to come get in the closet,” said Eastman resident Caitlyn Smith.

Eastman and the surrounding area in Dodge County started to feel the impact of a heavy thunderstorm Wednesday afternoon around 4:30.

“Wind started blowing,” said Stokes. “I heard trees cracking.”

And the result was obvious.

Trees fallen down over power lines and houses, and yards were torn to shreds.

“And it was like just any normal day just cloudy but like didn’t look like nothing bad was going to happen,” said Eastman resident Kyle Lowery. “We stayed out there maybe five minutes and turned around to come back and the first thing we see is a huge tree down on a power line and like power poles snapped in half.”

The damage in Eastman was extensive, including power lines cutting across the road. And now, it’s time for city officials and residents to start the cleanup.

“Hopefully power and I guess working on fixing on our roof and getting to where we can stay here I guess,” said Smith.

“Hopefully the Red Cross may be here soon or something like that? Hopefully yes because there’s a lot of people that live over here and a lot of roads that are down,” said Stokes.

But cleanup is already happening–it’s just a matter of time before things get back to normal.

For now, neighbors in Eastman are without power, but if there’s anything positive they can take out of this, it’s that there was only one injury to report–that’s according to the Fire Chief Carl Johnson.

As of right now, officials say there was no tornado in the area, just high winds.