COWETA COUNTY, Ga. — As clean-up is underway in Paulding County following this past weekend’s storm, a tornado survivor from Coweta County is urging everyone to be weather aware this severe weather season.
An EF-4 tornado destroyed Elizabeth Graves' Newnan home in 2021. Now, anytime there’s the threat of severe weather, Graves is on alert, and she says you should be too.
“The PTSD is real,” Graves said. “I didn’t know I could have it and after this storm, I was very, very emotional every day, all day almost.”
Graves' boyfriend John had gone to bed that night in 2021, but she stayed up watching Severe Weather Team 2 track the approaching storm.
“If it hadn’t been for that app and me listening to it and watching it and Brad Nitz saying, ‘It’s coming your way, take cover…’” Graves said.
She said she rushed to wake up her boyfriend. They grabbed their dog and rode out the storm in a closet.
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“I did a lot of praying out loud and I said, ‘Please help me God, please help me.’ And he did,” Graves said.
They all made it out alive, but their home was destroyed.
It wasn’t until later they would learn they survived a mile-wide tornado that hit Heard, Coweta and Fayette counties.
“We were shocked,” Graves said.
Graves told Severe Weather Team 2 that she still gets nervous when she knows severe weather is approaching and she urges everyone in Georgia to be weather aware.
“I have the app on my phone and when it goes off, I’m up. I mean it just … I’m moving,” Graves said.
Graves is now living in her new home on the same property but with some added tornado protection.
“The main thing that John and I wanted to get immediately was a storm shelter, a tornado shelter. We got it installed just a couple of months before we moved in before tornado season started. We looked for one that would withstand an EF-5 tornado with 250-mile-an-hour winds,” Graves said.
Graves said she was on edge during the latest round of storms but said she and her family were OK.
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