By Lee Ann Sides Garrett
For the Salisbury Post
After Monday’s severe storm, a trip down Goodnight Road looks like a war zone. A 1.5-mile stretch of the road is littered with downed trees and metal from carports and buildings.
Debris from Earl Sawyer’s barn lays scattered on both sides of the road as far as the eye can see.
“It just exploded,” Sawyer said Wednesday. “Winds carried pieces that probably weigh about 200 pounds across the road in the field.”
The roof of a large metal building behind the barn was also damaged.
Sawyer said that shortly before the storm, his dog came in acting “really strange.”
“That dog knew it. I don’t know how, but she knew it,” he said. Sawyer and his wife, Willie, rode out the storm in their basement.
“The rain looked like steam going by,” Sawyer said. “And it was screaming.”
The storm was “fast and furious,” said Mitchell Goodman. Goodman said the storm started around 7 p.m. and probably lasted 20 to 30 minutes. It was so loud that he didn’t hear any of the four trees falling that now litter his yard.
Goodman sat on the kitchen floor with his two chihuahuas and watched the top of a pine tree in his front yard touch the ground. Goodman also lost the roofs off his carport, barn and two outbuildings.
“I had no idea I would have the damage I did, but I’m fortunate I didn’t lose the house,” he said. “It peeled the roof off my building like it was peeling a banana.”
Just down the road, Mark and Bonnie Eller said winds damaged four trees and downed another six.
“It looks like a tornado came through,” Bonnie said.
A National Weather Service official who visited the area Tuesday said there was no tornado but estimated most of the damage was caused by straight-line winds of about 90 mph in the area.
“This is the worst I’ve seen since (Hurricane) Hugo,” Bonnie Eller said. “We’ve cleaned for two days and still have a long way to go.”
The Ellers raise bees and storm winds toppled both active hives. Bonnie said one hive is fine, but a swarm on the outside of the other refuses to go back inside since the storm.
“I also have someone’s trampoline in my pasture,” Bonnie said. “I have no idea who it belongs to.”