A grandmother had a lucky escape after Hurricane Helene threw a tree into her bedroom destroying everything in sight - apart from her Bible.

Cindy Cole, 62, was lying in bed when she heard a "voice" which told her to get up and go to a different part of the house in Nashville, Georgia, she claims."

Minutes later a tree crashed straight through the wall - smashing her bedroom to bits and landing right where she had slept, on September 26.

And when she went back to investigate later, she saw her Bible was still sat upright on her night stand - virtually untouched by the chaos.

The death toll from the storm climbed to 180, it has been reported - impacting North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia.

"When I first saw the Bible, I'm like, ‘Oh look, I cannot believe that the Bible's still standing'," she said."

"And I said, ‘You cannot touch the word of the Lord. You cannot touch it.'"

Cindy woke up when the electricity in her house cut off, and said she heard a voice - she believes a divine intervention.

"I had this little voice that kept saying, ‘Get up! Go to another room in your house'" she recalled."

"And I laid there and I heard it like three different times saying, ‘Get up! Go to another room in your house.' And I said, well, ‘I might as well get up.'"

"The first time I heard it, I just laid there looking around in the dark and I thought, well, okay. "

"So the second time it was a little bit louder and I didn't get up still, so I heard it again."

"The third time it said, ‘Get up! Go to another room in your house!' So I did."

Cindy says it wasn't more than five minutes before the tree from a neighbouring yard "crashed into the bedroom and landed on my bed"."

"I'm thinking it was the Lord telling me to move to another room," she said."

"I'd been praying and asking the Lord to keep us all safe."