Lee, Dougherty officials report damage to homes from Saturday storm system

LEESBURG — The worst damage in Lee County from a severe storm on Saturday was centered in one area, with a number of houses receiving wind and hits from downed trees.

“There was what I would call some significant damage on Stocks Dairy Road,” said Jim Wright, chief county marshal for Lee County. “That’s the only one I know of.”

Winds downed a number of trees and limbs in the area where Stocks Dairy Road intersects David Road. On Monday houses that suffered the most damage were evident, with tarps on some roofs, Wright said.

“Four or five houses were affected, from what I can tell,” he said. “Roofs were ripped from houses.”

The National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, after assessing damage on Sunday, determined that the damage was caused by straight-line winds, said Assistant Albany Fire Department Chief Rubin Jordan.

“There were straight-line winds of 80 or 90 miles per hour” in Dougherty County, he said.

At the Greenbriar Apartment complex on Graystone Lane, a tree struck a balcony of a unit, and initially there were reports of occupants trapped inside. However, it later was determined that no one had been trapped in the apartment.

A tree also fell on the roof of a residence on Capers Lane, Jordan said. There also was a reported tree on a roof from the evening storm system on the east side of the city.

Trees also struck several parked cars in the county, he said.

“We had reports of trees down on Eight Mile Road, trees down on roads in the county,” Jordan said. “Mostly we escaped this time. Just thank God we escaped significant damage this time.”

And while the news was not awful in the region, given the intensity of the storm system that dropped more than 4 inches of rain over much of the area during a 13-hour period, the recent good news on the COVID-19 front took a rather significant turn in the other direction over the weekend. In an area that has seen the number of COVID-19 patients being treated at local facilities in the Phoebe Putney Health System remain in the 18 to 24 range for most of the past few weeks, there was a sudden jump over the weekend.

Numbers released by Phoebe showed that COVID patients being treated at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital facilities in Albany showed an upward tick to 29 patients, while four were being treated Monday at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.

Staff Photo: Carlton Fletcher