It’s a scene that is replaying across metro Atlanta, Monday night – toppled trees and flooding from Irma’s passage.
Peachtree City Fire and rescue saw three times as many calls for the day during the heart of the storm. Peachtree fire typically responds to a dozen calls in a day. But so far, they’ve already responded to nearly 100 of them.
One of them involved a tree toppled on a two-story house. It’s a home owned by a firefighter with the city fire department – and he’s not the only firefighter this happened to Monday night.
There were two firefighters that had trees fall on their homes while they were responding to calls for help. One firefighter’s fiancé said she was on the second floor when the tree came crashing down around 1:30 p.m.
“We had been watching the trees and we were not expecting this tree to come down,” Tricia Jones said. “But when it came down it was down fast.”
She said the crews came over, put tarps up and “whatever they could do” to help.
“We actually have very few who live in the city and that was a high percent that had trees fall on them,” Fire Chief Joe O’Conor said.
The fire department also responded to a home in the Wynnmeade neighborhood. A police officer said the homeowners were inside the living room at the time when the tree fell on the house. Thankfully, they’re now safe and out of the home. A mile away, a large tree limb fell on a power line cutting the power for several homes.
The chief said this storm did surprise him – but in a good way. Of the dozens of calls they received, none of them were traffic related. The roads were mostly empty showing that many locals took the storm warnings seriously.
