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Dallas County Glass Owner Layne Talbot was having a normal day on Wednesday afternoon until a severe storm came through Valley Grande causing a massive tree to split and fall on his power lines causing him to be without power for about 48 hours.

Talbot was at his home on Highway 81 just enjoying his day on Wednesday when he started hearing some noises from outside.

“I was playing on the computer and then the power went out,” Talbot said. “I started hearing a lot of stuff hitting the side of the house. It sounded like debris or something. The wind started picking up and I got out of my chair. The back door is just a storm door, it flew open when all the rain started to come in. From there it got really bad. I couldn’t even see my yard through my door. After that, I screamed for my son trying to figure out where he was. I really was thinking a tornado was coming so I was getting ready to hide.”

The storm itself to Talbot did not seem to last too long but while it was around it caused enough damage to snap a nearly 40-50 ft tree on his power lines.

“All of a sudden the wind died down but the rain was still blowing,” Talbot said. “It was a matter of 10-15 seconds and the wind was gone. It didn’t last very long at all… One of our cedar trees fell over and that’s what fell on the power lines.”

Unfortunately, his wife was out driving that afternoon and she ended up getting stuck on the road due to falling trees on the road.

“My wife was driving in it trying to get home,” Talbot said. “She couldn’t do it. She would get behind someone who was going 10 miles an hour which was probably good because she probably would have gotten in the driveway when everything started happening. She tried to come here and couldn’t get through. Then she tried to go through by her mother’s house which is on Valley View Drive. When she went down there there was a tree that had her blocked off. So then she tried to go back into town and when she tried that a tree had fallen over there so she was pretty much going nowhere.”

With the power out, the power company originally told the Talbots that they would not be able to restore power to their home until Monday but according to Talbot a good Samaritan stepped in.

“Thank goodness I don’t know who helped us out but they were going to put ours off until Monday but they ended up doing it Friday so we had power Friday night,” Talbot said. “We just barely got our phone and Internet on today (Monday). My son has been having to go to his grandma to do homework. He’s in college and he is doing some online courses. We finally got everything back to normal.”

While they were waiting on the power company to come and fix the lines Talbot had to remove some debris from his yard to allow the power crew to get it. So he got some help from Shelby’s Tree Service which is owned by Rickey Shelby. Rickey’s son-in-law Landon helped pick up some debris, and Talbot said they were a big help to him and others from this storm and the continuing debris pickup from the January 12 tornado in Selma.

“They helped me out,” Talbot said. “They have been running around doing whatever they can. People have been calling them and they are still working on people’s trees and things from the January tornado”