The Greenville News from Greenville, South Carolina • Page 5

ffhf (frrrnwUlf News NATIONAL UPSTATE Monday, March 28, 1 994 5 A resk family takes tsrri ride rma sior wing Long) By Michael Dumiak Staff writer LONG CREEK Jean Honey-cutt, her daughter and four children huddled inside the plastic shower stall as it flew through the air. By that time the fear was gone and the storm was nothing more than a force pressing against the stall, a force she could feel through her whole body and one she said that she will never forget. "I can still feel it. I heard it, so strong and hard. I can feel it but it's hard to explain," she said, looking down a hill Sunday evening at the wreck of an Oconee County neighborhood.

Mrs. Honeycutt said she had visitors over Sunday afternoon for a birthday party for one of her grandchildren, 8-year-old Satin Cobb. "We heard about the bad weather and some people went home," she said. "When the children started acting scared, I told them that we would play a game and get into the shower stall. We had started to get in when I felt the floor move a little." Her daughter had just lifted her foot into the stall when the storm hit, she said.

"I didn't see anything, and I couldn't hear much. It sounded like a muffle," she said, holding her hands and pressing down over her chest. "A muffle. It was kind of quiet, but you could feel it all the way through you. At first, when it hit, we slid part of the way.

We hung on." The storm tossed the shower stall 40 feet from Mrs. Honey-cutt's house. It landed face down near a shed not far from the remains of the family apple stand and splinters of wood and metal had piled over it. "We stayed in there while everything was going; we didn't let anybody out," she said. "My neighbors across the street thought we were gone.

Then we started hollering and it was over. "The children were crying, but they were calm. My daughter and I checked to make sure everyone's hands and legs were inside the stall. When you come out of something like this holding a Vfr year-old child and everybody's all right, it's meant to be. It's a higher power working." Fast Service Super Low Payments! Call For Financial Analysis A' is 2 mm.

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IhQwWywt IllWillll llMUl iMill Mos 235.32 7. 75 Mos 329.45 7.75" Mos 470.64 7.75" Mos 705 96 7 75" totes ft terms available. youi supet low payment BASED ON 1 POINT DISCOUNT Denise Goss, right, walks through the remains of her neighbor's mobile home in Jasper, Sunday, with Here's An IMPORTANT NOTICE MS Regulation stale ttiat siterast or tame mortgage wans of t00 000 or less is tax deducicte it most cases Consult your CPA. CALL TODAY 3 COASTAL 281-3802 to cellular I 111 II 25,000 180 35,000 180 50.000 180 75.000 180 Other amounts, Call lot APR 7.92H from Page 1A Southeast half-mile. Turner said she, her 10-month-old granddaughter and four other relatives tried to ride out the tornado by crouching near the chimney.

They all survived, but ended up across the road in a ditch. "It just picked everything up and just twirled it around and then the ground looked like it was just coming up around," she said. "And then before you knew it everything was just everything was clearing out of the way. Everything just turned to rubble." Elsewhere in Alabama, tornadoes killed one person at a park and another in his car. In eastern Tennessee, a hiker in the Great Smoky Mountains drowned in a rain-swollen creek during an afternoon deluge.

And in Charlotte, N.C., a man standing in front of his home was killed by a lightning bolt. About 140 people were in the Goshen church, five miles north of Piedmont. Rescuers had feared others were buried, but all were accounted for after more than 100 searchers dug through the rubble by hand and used a crane to lift the roof. The storm knocked out power and telephone service, hampering rescue efforts. Passing motorists helped ferry the injured to hospitals around Piedmont, a rural town of 6,000 residents 72 miles west of Atlanta.

A temporary morgue was set up at a National Guard armory in Piedmont, and the civic center was turned into a shelter for the families of victims. Pews were used to carry the injured, and dead bodies were laid in a carport across the street from the Enlorged to show detail 1 -1 i church. In Guntersville, the roof was blown off a nursing home. The 25 to 30 residents were not injured and were taken to a hospital. Storms moved out of Alabama and up the Appalachian Mountains into Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, with tornado touchdowns, power outages, downed trees and damage to homes and businesses.

In northern Georgia, dozens of injuries were reported. A trailer park was destroyed in Pickens County, near the Tennessee line. Seven of the 14 dead in Georgia were in Pickens County. Two other trailer parks in nearby Georgia counties also were hit, authorities said. A tornado touched down in Charlotte, N.C., with heavy damage reported at a housing complex and elsewhere in the city.

"It was lightning and thundering real bad and the lights went off," said John Balatsias, manager of Copal Restaurant. "From what customers are telling us, trees are down and some houses have been hit and metal buildings have been ripped apart." In Boiling Springs, N.C., about 50 miles southwest of Charlotte in western North Carolina, Jimmy Ledford and customers at his Buy and Sell store huddled for about 15 minutes as an apparent tornado passed through. "It's tore up a lot of buildings and trees and all kinds of stuff," he said. The town near the South Carolina line was without power. At least 10 people were injured.

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The skirt of a mobile home dangled 30 feet in the air from a power line. "We got in the closet just in time. The wind was howling around the house," said David Hubbard, who stayed hidden with his wife and daughter as his newly-remodeled home was taken apart. Marvin Loudermilk was trying to figure out how to retrieve his eight horses that were wandering over broken fences out of the pasture into the road. "Everything here what a mess," Loudermilk said, pointing across the road.

"I can't believe that was a trailer." Long Creek resident James Honeycutt lost his business and home while his family escaped the storm in a plastic shower stall. "Only the house was insured," Honeycutt said, stepping over the intermingled pieces of his house and apple stand. "All the tractors, farm equipment, all that's gone. The good Lord was with my family, though." The Salvation Army sent a mobile kitchen from its Greenville office to Oconee County to help feed displaced residents, said Capt. R.C.

Fleeman of the relief agency. The unit was sent to Wal-halla and was on standby Sunday night, he said. Although the damage reports led National Weather Service officials to believe two tornadoes touched down in Oconee County, officials won't be able to confirm Debt Continued duces families' financial flexibility they are unlikely to dip into savings to continue spending when to do so is difficult and expensive. "What seems to be one of the best of times financially for our country as a whole stands, in contrast, to what is arguably one of the riskiest times that large parts of the household sector have faced in many years," said Lawrence B. Lindsey, an influential member of the Federal Reserve Board who presented and analyzed the new figures in a speech in Baltimore earlier this month.

"I believe that the household sector poses one of the most serious risks to the continuation of this recovery." Interest payments and repayments of principal continue to claim an unusually high proportion of household incomes for families that earn less than a year and have no one old enough to qualify for Social Security or Medicare. These payments by middle-Class families consumed 22.9 percent of these households' aftertax income last year, down from a peak of 25.9 percent in 1990, but still far above the average in the 1960s and 1970s of a little under 18 percent, according to Lindsey. By contrast, when elderly and wealthy families are included, the Continued what areas experienced actual tornadoes as opposed to wind damage until Monday, Jones said. Jones said it appeared other areas were hit by moderate to weak tornadoes, including the northern area of Pickens County, the Oak Grove community in northern Greenville County, the Arrowood Church community near Chesnee, and the area around State 221 in northern Cherokee County. One person was taken to a hospital after a tree fell on a car in Gaffney during the storm, said Cherokee County emergency preparedness director Jim Brasing-ton.

Brasington said two mobile homes were destroyed off of State 221 near the North Carolina state line. That and other damage in the area may have been caused by two different storm occurrences, he said. In Greenville County, minor flooding was reported in the Augusta Road area and around Ti-gerville, said Dale Surrett, coordinator of emergency preparedness for the county. Marble-size hail also was reported, and high winds downed a number of trees in Taylors, Surrett said, adding that no injuries or major property damage was reported. The storm ripped the roof off of a Southern Bell storage building in Spartanburg, said company spokesman James Thomas.

Thomas said the building at 100 Belton Drive is used to store cable. Both the Walhalla and Cowpens offices of Southern Bell were operating on backup generators Sunday night. About 13,000 Duke Power Co. customers across the Upstate were left without power Sunday night, with more than half of those in Spartanburg and Cherokee counties, said Duke Power spokesman Joe Maher. from Page 1A debt service burden for all households fell last year to 16.2 percent, only slightly higher than levels in the 1960s and 1970s.

Economists like Lindsey are worried about Americans like Jim Rice, a 39-year-old veterinarian in Cynthiana, who complains that his income has not kept up with rising prices, especially for cars. Rice refinanced his home last year with a larger mortgage and used the extra money to buy an $18,000 Oldsmobile Bravada. "What I save is my retirement plan, and that's zilch," Rice said. For middle-class Americans, wages and salaries have stagnated. But rising financial markets and government assistance programs, like Social Security and Medicare, have increased the incomes of the affluent and the old in recent years.

So while debt payments have fallen as a share of the rising incomes of the rich or old, the share remains high for middle-class families. At the same time, low interest rates have encouraged millions of homeowners to increase their mortgage debt and use the extra cash for consumer purchases. The poor are unable to borrow much, so economists worry less about their debt payments. The Legend of the Dogwood and The Cross At the time of the Crucifixion, the dogwood, then the size of the oak and other forest trees, was chosen as the timber of the Cross, because it was so firm and strong. And from the Cross it was said, "Never again shall the dogwood tree grow big enough to be used for such a cruel purpose.

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