As the dust cleared from violent storms that raked across North Georgia on Thursday, a pair of heartbreaking fatalities related to the weather were reported Friday.
A 5-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on a car carrying multiple passengers on Haley Road in Jackson, the county coroner told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Butts coroner said another occupant of the car was taken to the hospital in critical condition. It was not immediately clear if they were the only two people in the vehicle.
The child’s death was confirmed Friday in an address by Gov. Brian Kemp, who added that a state Department of Transportation worker had also been killed while responding to storm damage in northwest Georgia.
An uncle identified the child as Egan Jeffcoat to Channel 2 Action News.
The DOT employee was identified as Sean Kornacki, a Walker County highway maintenance foreman who had been with the organization for more than 16 years, according to a letter sent to employees by DOT Commissioner Russell McMurry. Kornacki was killed “in the line of duty” early Friday while responding to clear debris, McMurry said.
“Sean was a dedicated employee, maintaining and ensuring that our roadways were safe, especially during times of inclement weather,” McMurry added. “His commitment to public service and to maintaining Georgia’s transportation system was evident.”
Residents of North Georgia spent Friday taking stock of the damage wrought by high winds and heavy rain the evening before. Kemp, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and James Stallings, director of the state’s Emergency Management Agency, took to the air in a helicopter to view the worst-hit areas without hindering recovery operations.
The power of the storm was particularly evident in Butts County, where three train cars were pushed off their tracks by the wind, blocking intersections along Lee Maddox Road.
The Butts County School System was closed Friday and some large employers suffered serious damage to their buildings, according to Deputy County Manager J. Michael Brewer.
Brewer also shared ominous-looking nighttime photos of the huge trees littering Haley Road where the 5-year-old boy was killed. Workers had partially cut through the debris, but Brewer said there “are several larger trees that are going to require heavy-duty equipment to remove and clear.”
Amid all the damage, good Samaritans leaped into action, and Butts County was no exception.
Tony West, 25, a roofer who grew up in the region, told the AJC he was attempting to drive home through the storm with his fiancèe and 5-month-old daughter when he arrived at the scene of the incident. West, who said he was a U.S. Army veteran, saw an ambulance and firetruck and knew someone needed help. His first instinct was to hop out of his truck and approach the crushed vehicle to see what he could do.
West wasn’t expecting to immediately be pressed into service.
“There were people with chainsaws, firefighters, paramedics,” West said. “And a firefighter ran up to me and said, ‘I need your help now.’”
Suddenly, West said firefighters handed him the Jaws of Life, the hydraulic rescue tool used to cut and spread damaged car doors to extract anyone inside. West wasn’t sure where to start; the car was so badly crushed, he couldn’t tell if it was a sedan or an SUV.
“It was pretty much flattened,” he said.
Multiple other firefighters were using Jaws of Life devices on the car, and an injured victim had already been extracted, West said. But as the paramedics and firefighters worked to remove Jeffcoat, West heard one of them say, “The baby is dead.”
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
Credit: Channel 2 Action News
West described how he was shocked into stillness for a moment before turning back to his own family waiting in his truck.
“All I could think was, ‘Hey, there’s nothing here. There’s nothing more you could do to save a life,’” West said.
He was able to drive his baby and fiancée to her mother’s house, but returned to help move trees from the road through the night.
“I’m a father of a 5-month-old and a 5-year-old, so it just kind of hit home,” West said. “If it was me and somebody rode by, I would hope they would help me.”
Former State Rep. Colton Moore said the head of transportation for county roads in Walker County told him that Kornacki, the DOT employee, was working alone trying to get a tree out of the road when he was killed.
“We shouldn’t be sending guys in the DOT out into a storm like that in the middle of the night without some help,” Moore argued.
According to an incident report from the Walker County Sheriff’s Office, Kornacki was called to an area of Chamberlain Road that was blocked by a large pine tree and some power lines. It was just past midnight when Kornacki arrived, got a chainsaw from the back of his truck and began to cut down the tree to clear the road. A deputy was at the scene the entire time and monitoring Kornacki, but had his vehicle some yards away to not be in the path of the tree, the incident report states.
Sometime later, the deputy said he heard and saw the tree falling. As the chainsaw continued to roar, the deputy said he lost sight of Kornacki. When the deputy got closer to the tree, he spotted Kornacki’s yellow reflective jacket shining off his flashlight.
“It appeared he was under the tree he had just cut down,” the deputy wrote in the incident report. “I started yelling for him and asking if he was OK and had no response.”
— Staff writer Greg Bluestein contributed to this article.
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