Throughout the month of May, WMAZ is ‘rewinding the clock’ and looking back at some of the biggest weather events in Central Georgia over the last 20 years.
This week, Chief Meteorologist Ben Jones is taking it back to Mother's Day 2008 when tornadoes hit Central Georgia.
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There were 13 documented tornados in Central Georgia on the morning of May 11, 2008, and while Laurens County didn't see the most damage, it was there that the storm became deadly.
For the people who live in Laurens County and the first responders who were witnesses, the memories of that deadly morning are still vivid.
"[It was] kind of like a roar," said homeowner, Steve Albritton. "It just made a loud noise, a loud thud, that's what really woke me up."
The thud was a tree landing on his house.
"It didn't do any real damage," Albritton said.
But right up the road and across Highway 441 was a different story.
"[It] tore up some houses, and I had some neighbors that got killed in it," Albritton said.
As the tornado tore across the county, a couple in their 50s -- Tracy and Lisa Clements -- were killed when their mobile home was hit.
PHOTOS: Deadly 2008 Mother's Day tornadoes in Laurens Co.
"That double-wide mobile home... it was just like somebody had hit it with a big bulldozer or a track hoe, it was just a pile of rubble," Albritton said.
"They were caught offguard, they didn't know what was coming," said Laurens Co. EMA Director, Don Bryant.
Bryant responded when the calls started coming in.
"We were going basically from one residence to another residence, checking them out," he said. "They did discover that there were people in this mobile home and unfortunately two of them were fatalities. There were also two children here that did survive. It was a very horrific experience for my first responders, which most of them were volunteers at the time."
Back then, the city of Dublin had a tornado siren system.
"But we really had no way of warning people out in the county," Bryant said.
Neighbor Bobby Garner said he was grateful to have lived through the tornado.
"It could have been me, that's why I say I'm blessed, I'm blessed. We're still alive. We're still alive," Garner said.
The loss of life that day is something Bryant and Albritton still feel.
"It was also a very sad time for us because we did lose some of our good people here in Laurens County," Bryant said.