Farris Hawkins surveyed the damage caused by Saturday night’s EF-3 tornado, and shook his head.

His two-story house was largely unscathed. But his garage and shop just yards away had a large sliding door sucked out by the wind, and a gaping hole in the roof. Just inside the missing door, an artificial Christmas tree stood untouched.

A shed, down a hill about 25 yards away, was completely stripped of its roof and walls. Much of the metal from the shed landed in front of the garage.

And trees everywhere around Hawkins were in pieces, either broken by the tornado or sawed apart to clear the driveway to his property. Amidst a pile of downed branches, a rhodedendron bush sat in full bloom, barely damaged.

“We had a nice place here, but it’s all torn up now,” Hawkins said. “The rhodedendrons are damaged, the azaleas are all gone. If I wasn’t a grown man, I’d cry.”

Hawkins said he and his wife usually don’t pay much attention to storms. But when the power went out Saturday night and the winds howled, Hawkins said his wife said, “We’d better get someplace safe.”

A rental house next door that Hawkins didn’t fare as well. A tree crashed through the roof, and many windows were blown out. His tenants had to move out, Hawkins said.

A few miles away on Corner Road, Rhonda Rhodes looked over a pair of travel trailers on her brother’s property that were overturned by the tornado. One, just moved there for use as a hunting trailer, leaned against a house that was unoccupied and being used for storage.

The porch off her trailer next door was also blown away. Thankfully for Rhodes and her husband, they were out of town when the storm hit. They watching her daughter, former Corner High softball player Elizabeth Allred, play for Wallace State-Dothan.

“I’ve been here 50 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rhodes said. “And I don’t want to see it again. I’m just glad we weren’t here.”