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THOMASVILLE — Kindley Road resident Daniel Byerly was happy Thursday to face the kind of transportation hassles that hit you after your car has been totaled.

His 1997 Ford Escort sat crumpled where a rampaging tornado tossed it the day before, buried by layers of splintered wood and random debris.

But car troubles were a breeze compared with the serious injury that he, his wife and young son narrowly escaped the night before: They fled their mobile home to seek shelter in what turned out to be a poor choice, a nearby amusement center in the very heart of the storm.

“It sounded like a million oak trees snapping in half,” Byerly recalled. “It must have been God’s wrath. He was trying to teach us a lesson or something.”

Byerly, his neighbors near the intersection of N.C. 109 and U.S. 64, and dozens of other Davidson County residents spent Thursday alternately digging out, cleaning up and marveling at the twister’s destructive power.

The violent storm claimed the lives of a 50-year-old grandmother and her granddaughter, age 3, in a small house off Old Burkhart Road south of Lexington. Davidson County officials confirmed the two deaths Thursday but withheld their identities pending notification of kin.

Emergency responders took 10 people to hospitals with injuries.

“I’ve been to a lot of disasters, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Charley, but this is the worst I’ve seen,” Duke Energy worker Don Goings said near the house where two people were killed.

The National Weather Service officially declared the storm a tornado Thursday afternoon, but meteorologists remained uncertain of its relative strength or how many times it touched down. Experts said the storm cut a swath about 7 miles long and about 100 feet wide.

Places hit worst included the area where Byerly lives and a section south of Lexington, near the intersection of Old Burkhart Road and Meadow Run Lane where houses were lifted off their foundations.

Marshall Chriscoe, 24, a neighbor of the grandmother and child who died, said searchers found the injured woman quickly.

“She was talking and moving her arms,” Chriscoe said. “She just kept yelling, 'Get me up!’ But we were afraid to move her before the rescue squad got there.”

Rescuers took her to a nearby hospital, where she died.

Firefighters and volunteers hunted for the little girl more than two hours before finding her in a debris pile, Chriscoe said. She was later pronounced dead.

Utility workers and other emergency personnel spent Thursday restoring downed power and phone lines, replacing broken poles, clearing away felled trees and making other repairs in the long, narrow impact zone.

Byerly, Chriscoe and other survivors kept reliving the previous day that went awry about 5:30 p.m., when the storm struck just minutes after meteorologists first saw it on radar.
Then thoughts turned to dealing with problems the tornado left behind, such as getting to work after your car’s been crushed.

“What can I do?” Byerly wondered aloud. “I’ve got a job I need to get to.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact H. Scott Hoffmann at 373-7029 or scott.hoffmann@news-record.com