SANDERSVILLE, Ga. — Wednesday's morning wind gusts hit many spots in Washington County. One of the places hit hardest was the Dura-Line Plant in Sandersville.
The plant creates plastic pipes, but their production is now on hold.
The morning started as a normal for folks at the plant near Sandersville.
"It was just a typical day -- we knew that there was some severe weather that was in the forecast," says Russell Sims.
Sims is the plant manager and says the incident happened between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. They realized the weather was getting serious.
"We had noticed a lot of heavy rain coming down, and we went to go start to shut some of the doors, some of the overhead doors, and suddenly a big gust of wind came into the building," says Sims.
He says it happened very fast.
"When the alarms within the building went off, there was maybe 5-10 seconds before we had to react," he says.
As soon as it came, it went.
"It came through, lasted maybe 25-30 seconds, then it was quiet," he adds.
Sims says the employees hid in a breakroom in the middle of the building, but a lot of damage was done.
The front office windows and doors were wiped out, building debris was scattered along the ground, many cars were damaged, trees were uprooted, and the roof was blown away.
The company doesn't know what happens next.
"We're just assessing the damage of the situation, and we're going to have a lot of different meetings and a lot of decisions to make on how we're going to get it back up and running again," says Sims.
Sims says he's just happy that there were no life-threatening injuries. However, Washington County Sheriff Joel Cochran says that two people were injured inside the plant, and a driver of an 18-wheeler near the plant was injured when his truck blew over. All were taken to a local hospital.
The county would be out to assess the storm damage within the next 48 hours.
The National Weather Service meteorologists will survey storm damage in Washington County Thursday, and the findings should be posted by the end of the day.