MOULTRIE, Ga. — When Becky and Franklin Jacobs were able to see their house and neighborhood off Lower Meigs Road in Tuesday morning daylight, her thought was that it “looked like a war zone” to her.

A storm that brought winds of 85 miles per hour or more tore through the neighborhood with the previous night’s severe thunderstorms dropped a large pine tree crashing through the couple’s home.

Neither of the Jacobs was injured, nor was 16-year-old grandson Andrew Davis who also was staying there when the storm moved through between 10:30 and 11 p.m.

“I could feel our home shake,” Becky Jacobs said. “I could just feel it moving. It was like it was coming up (in the air). It’s something I never want to go through ever again. I was terrified.  

“I think everybody pretty much survived. The noise was tremendous. It looked like a war zone this morning. It was awful.”

Surveying the damage — several houses damaged and large pine trees either uprooted or snapped in two — it indeed seemed fortunate that no injuries were reported along the path of destruction. Power lines also were downed, and emergency crews were working to restore power.

The Jacobs will be forced out of their home, whose roof suffered severe damage. And once the large pine tree plunged through and inside the house it added the downpour into the mix.

“We were very, very fortunate,” she said. “An angel was looking after us.”

The Jacobs just moved in less than three years ago and will be out for some time while the house is fixed.

“We don’t have a kitchen, we don’t have a bedroom, we don’t have a bathroom,” she said.

Inside, insulation littered the floor of the hallway and kitchen. The door of the bathroom in the master bedroom would not open due to damage above.

Outside, the hole was covered with a tarp, but where it wasn’t, roofing shingles were blown away in large chunks.

Becky Jacobs said that first responders, paramedics and volunteer firefighters arrived soon after the winds had hit.

Susan Gause, a lifetime resident in the neighborhood located right off Lower Meigs Road just past the Ochlockonee River, said she and husband David’s house was not damaged.

“It could have been a lot worse,” David Gause said. “People could have been hurt, killed. All of this stuff can be replaced.”

According to the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, one tornado has been confirmed that was in extreme north Mitchell County.

The twister that touched down north of Baconton near the Dougherty County line near the Flint River was rated an EF1 with winds of top speeds of 90 to 95 miles per hour, said meteorologist Kelly Godsey.

It damaged some pecan trees and a few mobile homes, Godsey said.

It appears that a second tornado touched down in Dougherty County and traveled into Worth County. That storm is still under investigation as is one in Turner County.

In Colquitt County the damage did not appear to come from a twister, Godsey said.

“We think it ended up being straight-line wind conditions,” he said. (That’s) what we saw on radar and based on what the emergency management director (Russell Moody) told us.”

There was some circulation in the clouds, but the way the trees were blown all down in the same direction also indicates that there was no tornado involved, Godsey said.

According to Moody, the storm downed trees, power lines and homes on Walter Murphy Road, trees and power lines in the Highway 202/Lower Meigs Road area.

“(It took) pretty much a path from the southwest corner to Lower Meigs Road, almost to town,” he said.

Seven to eight residences were damaged on the south side, as were outlying buildings. There also was damage in the Autreyville and Tallokas Road areas.

In all, some 80 trees were downed in the county.

“Everybody stayed out pretty much all night dealing with it,” Moody said. “All our emergency services did an excellent job.”