PAULDING COUNTY, Ga. — (Editor’s note: This story originally reported the grandmother’s age as 81, family later clarified she’s turning 81 in a few days.)

A granddaughter said Sunday morning it was the grace of God that saved her 80-year-old grandmother in Paulding County, after severe storms brought down a tree down through her bedroom. 

Kaley York told 11Alive Meteorologist Melissa Nord she lives next door to her grandma on Dandy Road. She and Scott Bingham were at home as the storms began to roll over Paulding County, when their lights began flickering.

“That’s when he was like, ‘We’re about to lose power.’ And then next thing you know lights go off, you get the (phone alerts)… you hear things flying,” York described, adding that in the moment it “just felt like it was the end, honestly.”

Then, she said, “After that, after everything calms down, you check on all the dogs, you check on the house, he started looking outside — the trampoline was gone.”

Then they saw the tree that had fallen on her grandmother’s home, where her mother also lives. Bingham rushed over.

He said he got into the home and immediately looked into the 80-year-old’s room, discovering roofing and insulation crashed in. 

“Obviously your mind goes to the worst case, which is that she’s not there, she’s not gonna make it,” he said. 

But the 80-year-old had made it — had not been seriously hurt, in fact. Bingham described a miraculous scene where a large tree branch had landed next to her hip and a smaller branch had gone through her pajama shirt, but none had directly fallen on her.

He and York however described her state of shock. They said storms picked back up at one point and they were going to go back to the basement to ride them out, and the grandmother asked for her slippers first.

“She’s like, ‘Well my slippers are next to my bed can you go get them please.’ She doesn’t realize that there’s nothing left of her room, everything in her room is soaked. She’s like, ‘It’s not that bad.’ We finally got her some shoes and she stood up, went over and looked at her room, her jaw just dropped,” Bingham said. “She didn’t realize how bad it was.”

It’s not yet confirmed a tornado struck Paulding County; National Weather Service crews will have to survey the damage to make an assessment in the coming days. But tornado or not, significant damage was apparent across the county. York and Bingham said they had family and friends — and even other neighbors in Paulding County whose homes were less damaged — ready to help them. 

York said it was “all God” that her grandmother was able to escape serious harm.

“When you look at a brick house, with the roofing, you see that and you’re just like, you’re just mind blown,” she said. “Definitely all God. And it’s just a blessing that my grandmother doesn’t even realize what had happened, so hey, it’s all good.”