NEWNAN, Ga. — We’re now hearing stories of survival following severe storms that ripped through the city of Newnan and other parts of North Georgia.
Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen spoke to one family who said they did all they could do to save their children.
Lothar Deiss lives along Smokey Road in Newnan. He lost his home early Friday morning as an EF-4 tornado ripped through the area.
He told Petersen that he’s old enough to have learned you can work all your life for something and lose it in an instant.
“I worked every day on this place, and now it’s all gone. But I have my family. And they’re safe,” Deiss said.
Almost all of the homes along Smokey Road for hundreds of yards in every direction took a horrible beating.
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As the tornado roared in, Deiss’ daughter Rebecca, her husband Matt and their three little girls ran over to his place.
They put the kids in the bathtub and covered them with a mattress.
“All of our ears popped. My oldest daughter, who is in the 5th grade, her nose started bleeding right before it hit. I don’t know if it was the pressure,” Rebecca Pittman said.
Matt Pittman said first there was the sound of breaking glass and then came the odor.
“A smell. A smell of wood burning. Smelled like a sawmill,” He told Petersen.
Some lost a little. Some lost a lot. Some lost everything. Deiss said his faith may have been tested, but it wasn’t broken.
“I’m not a churchgoer on a regular basis, but I do believe in the man above. And he saved us,” Deiss said.
Deiss told Petersen that he asked his daughter not to bring the kids back to his home Friday. He didn’t want them to see the destruction.
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