As Hurricane Helene roared outside, the wind howling and branches snapping, John Savage went to his grandparents’ bedroom to make sure they were OK.

“We heard one snap and I remember going back there and checking on them,” the 22-year-old said of his grandparents, Marcia, 74, and Jerry, 78, who were lying in bed. “They were both fine, the dog was fine.”

But not long after, Savage and his father heard a “boom” — the sound of one of the biggest trees on the property in Beech Island, South Carolina, crashing on top of his grandparents’ bedroom and killing them.

“All you could see was ceiling and tree,” he said. “I was just going through sheer panic at that point.”

John Savage said his grandparents were found hugging one another in the bed, adding that the family thinks it was God’s plan to take them together, rather than one suffer without the other.

“When they pulled them out of there, my grandpa apparently heard the tree snap beforehand and rolled over to try and protect my grandmother,” he said.

They are among the people who died in one of the deadliest storms in U.S. history. More than 200 people were confirmed dead across multiple states Thursday, according to a tally by CBS News.

Dozens of them died just like the Savages, victims of trees that fell on homes or cars. The dead include two South Carolina firefighters killed when a tree fell on their truck. President Biden traveled to the Carolinas on Wednesday for an aerial tour of the widespread damage caused by the storm.

The storm battered communities across multiple states, flooding homes, causing mudslides and wiping out cell service.

“They loved each other to their dying day”

Jerry Savage did all sorts of handy work, but he worked mostly as an electrician and a carpenter. He went “in and out of retirement because he got bored,” John Savage said. “He’d get that spirit back in him to go back out and work.”