DALTON, Ga. — Ashley Bell said she knew Tuesday night’s storms were a little stronger than normal, but she didn’t expect to have her car turned into something out of a Saturday morning cartoon. 

“We heard the squeaking of a tree and a huge crash and right away I knew what had happened,” Bell said, describing the sound she heard as she and her two children huddled in a back room of their house. “I just didn’t know it would be as bad as it was. It was like a giant foot had come down from the sky and stepped on my car. It just crushed it right in the middle just like on ‘Looney Tunes.’”

The 2004 Lincoln certainly played the part of a made-for-television disaster with the trunk of the tree firmly lodged in the midsection of the car off Stoneleigh Road in Dalton and other parts of the tree hitting three cars in a neighbor’s yard and dragging down the gutters on the neighbor’s home. And with her 1-year-old daughter Miriam Karim in her arms and her 7-year-old son Jabril Karim playing with the family dog, Bell was thankful it wasn’t worse.

“I wasn’t expecting such a storm,” she said. “I was just expecting a regular thunderstorm.”

Residents across northwest Georgia and in parts of Tennessee were holding on Tuesday evening as heavy storms pushed from the northwest to the southeast, leaving the area littered with hail damage, wind damage and power outages, some of which could last until the end of the week. Heavy winds were responsible for structural collapses and other damage across the area as well. 

But emergency management officials in both Whitfield and Murray counties said no injuries were reported in connection with the storms. 

“As of right this minute, we have had zero reported injuries,” said Whitfield County Emergency Management Director Claude Craig. “We had a lot of people on home oxygen we had to look after during the night but we didn’t have any injuries as a result of the storm. It was fast and it was hard.”

Whitfield County was hit by rain and damaging wind, but for the most part avoided the heavy, damaging hail that hit southeast Tennessee. Golf-ball-size hail was reported in the Cleveland, Tenn., area, and Craig said some hail was reported in Rocky Face and during a brief shower in Dalton, but it wasn’t with the severity that hit Bradley County in Tennessee. Chattanooga television and social media posts showed heavy damage caused by intense downpours of hail in addition to the damaging winds. 

Craig said 15 power poles in the county were broken and there were 92 calls to the 911 center for trees in roadways. He said the biggest challenge for emergency responders was that the damage was so widespread throughout the area and not limited to a certain path.

“It affects the response people because we were spread out everywhere,” Craig said. “There was no isolated site that we could focus on because we had reports from everywhere. We had more trees reported down than we had people at that point, and that was a big concern after it got dark. At night, that is hard to deal with because you will come up on a tree across a road quickly and that could lead to a dangerous situation. But thankfully, we didn’t have any major problems like that.”

Two waves of the storm came through, hitting Whitfield County around 5 p.m. and then again two hours later. 

Murray County EMA Director Dwayne Bain said his county missed most of the destructive power. 

“We came out pretty unscathed,” Bain said. “We had a few trees reported down and power outages here and there, but I haven’t heard of any significant damage. I reckon we had a bubble wrapped around us.” 

According to North Georgia EMC’s website, outages affecting more than 5,000 people were still being addressed Wednesday afternoon. Most of the outages were in Walker County, but customers in Whitfield and Murray counties were also experiencing outages. At one point after the storm Tuesday night, the utility provider reported more than 60,000 customers were affected by 22,000 outages. NGEMC reported 25 broken power poles from the storm. The company said efforts to restore all power could take until Friday to be completed. 

“We are making good progress and crews had worked hard throughout the night, and we hope to continue to restore the power and our goal is to have things on as quickly and as safely as possible,” NGEMC spokeswoman Kim Gamel said. “Some of the outages are very isolated, and the restoration efforts could be extended. We have called in for support crews from other agencies and that is making a difference.”

More than 3,300 Dalton Utilities customers were impacted by Tuesday’s storms. As of Wednesday afternoon, there were still some 100 Dalton Utilities customers without power.