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Heed the warnings for bad weather Too often when bad weather blows up, a lot of us think, "Oh well, it won't hit us" and we ignore the TV and radio warnings and the sirens, if they are within our hearing. Such was the case last Thursday when the sirens went off in Jackson after a tornado was reportedly spotted in the Salitpa area. "Oh, that's just the sirens," many of us said as we went about our business. The sirens sounded in Jackson about midday last Thursday during a heavy thunderstorm, around the same time that a F3 tornado with 140 mph winds slammed into Sand Island at Miller's Ferry, killing one person and destroying or damaging 30 homes. Miller's Ferry may be a distance up the road in Wilcox County but a lot of Jacksonians and other Clarke Countians have camps and vacation homes there. A few Jackson folks have moved there permanently. Some had damage but thankfully no one from our area was hurt. Our sympathy goes out to the Wilcox County family who lost Cliff Gaston, 48, to the storm. Gaston, a forester, picked the wrong day to stop by the island for a midday break from work. Jamie and Patsy Wallace's doublewide mobile home was right in the path of the storm and was completely leveled. They survived in a fiberglass storm shelter sphere that they had installed out of fear for the safety of visiting grandchildren. The grandchildren were not there Thursday but the grandparents lived because the shelter was there. We're not suggesting that everyone rush out to install such a shelter but this one did its job well. The Wallaces certainly will attest to that. The storm system continued eastward, killing eight students at Enterprise High School and another Enteprise person as well as several in Americus, Ga. that night.
We are as guilty as anyone in ignoring bad weather. But maybe last Thursday's storms will serve as a reminder that tornadoes can and do occur and they can be killers. We should all heed the warnings that are given...they could save our lives.
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