SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – Karen Cribbs and her husband felt fortunate to escape with their life after being trapped inside a battered southeastern Georgia home during Hurricane Matthew.
While standing outside their home in Savannah, Cribbs stared long Sunday morning at the tree that crashed through the house’s roof and front door. She and her husband, Wilbur, 60, were trapped for hours after the tree slammed into the residence just after 4:30 a.m. Friday.
“We have life,” Karen Cribbs, 59, said calmly, then pointed toward the house. “That can be replaced.”
The tree that once stood high above their house splintered at the trunk, crashing down into the dark gray shingled roof and white siding.
The couple found themselves “pinned in” by sheet rock and roof beams that had been crushed by the large trunk and canopy.
Both were able to make their way to a hallway in the center of the house, where they stayed in a bathroom lit with flashlights until 7 a.m. when they called their son, also named Wilbur, who lives down the street.
Wilbur, 33, walked behind the house, located on a corner lot, and shouldered his way in through the back door. Her other son Chris, 28, slept through the whole thing in a bedroom at the back of the house.
“All we could do was try to dig our way out and try to get to safety,” she said.
Neither was seriously injured.
Some others were not as fortunate.
There were three fatalities in Georgia related to harsh weather brought on by the storm. Jefferson A. Davis, 41, who was in his bed, died after a large pine tree crashed through the roof and onto him, said Chatham County coroner Dr. William Wessinger.
Bulloch County deputy coroner Richard Pylant said Matthew Ward and James Altman died Saturday morning. Ward, 28, died when his car slammed into a tree, while Altman, 68, was home alone and killed when he was struck in the head after two trees fell on his home.
Hurricane Matthew left a pattern of destruction in Georgia that was sometimes hard to fathom, with beachfront condos weathering the storm without a broken window while falling trees killed three people as far as 70 miles from the coast.
Overall the storm failed to deliver the devastation local officials had feared as it raked Georgia’s 100-mile coastline overnight Friday before passing Saturday morning.
With much of Savannah still without electricity, people are standing in line for ice and groceries like it’s the Black Friday kickoff to holiday shopping.
More than 150 people stood in line Sunday afternoon outside a Kroger supermarket on Savannah’s suburban south side, waiting for the store to open.
Debbie Berta said she had been waiting more than an hour to get propane gas for her grill. She said she also wanted “bread, potatoes, eggs – and a piece of sanity.”
Berta said security guards had been coming outside, first telling the crowd the store would open by 1 p.m., then pushing the time back to 2 p.m.
Chad Schultz was near the front of the line and said he had been there two hours.
His shopping list: ice, bread and beer.
“The essentials, you know, just some stuff that doesn’t spoil in the fridge.”
Schultz said his apartment was without power and he was preparing to spend days in the dark, “There are just so many trees and wires down,” he said.
President Barack Obama declared Georgia a disaster area after Hurricane Matthew battered the southeast area of the state. Obama signed the declaration late Saturday to free up federal aid to help recovery efforts in counties including Bryan, Camden, Chatham, Glynn, Liberty and McIntosh.
Georgia Power says about 190,000 homes and businesses on the coast are still without electricity. The bulk of the outages remain in Chatham County, which has more than 109,000.
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Associated Press writer Jonathan Landrum Jr. contributed to this report from Atlanta.