Recovery and search efforts continued in the South on Friday, a day after severe storms and tornadoes raked the region, killing at least nine people, blowing roofs off homes and cutting power for thousands.
As CNN reports, at least seven people were killed in central Alabama’s Autauga County alone, with two others – including a 5-year-old boy – killed in Georgia, officials said. In those states and Kentucky, at least 37 preliminary tornado reports were recorded in storms that damaged power lines, severed tree limbs and sent debris flying into streets.
Damage from what appeared to be two tornadoes – preliminarily rated an EF-3 and an EF-2 – were found in two parts of Spalding County, in central Georgia, according to the National Weather Service. EF-2 damage was found in three more nearby counties extending to the east, the weather service said, which added that the total number of tornadoes is still being determined. To put that into perspective, tornadoes rated EF-2 pack winds of at least 111 mph while EF-3 tornadoes contain winds between 136 and 165 mph.
A particularly damaging storm with at least one powerful tornado also tore through both Selma – an Alabama city known for its role in the civil rights movement – and a community in Autauga County, situated one county to the east, the National Weather Service said.
Rescue teams were searching for missing people in Alabama’s Autauga County, where seven deaths have been reported, emergency management director Ernie Baggett said on MSNBC. He credited schools for saving more lives by not releasing students early.
County coroner Buster Barber told Reuters the number of casualties would rise. “We are finding more bodies as we speak,” he said in a phone interview. “We’ve got search teams out in the area.” It wasn’t immediately clear whether that was reflected in the toll. The search and rescue phase of the response efforts transitioned to a recovery phase Saturday, Autauga County Emergency Management Agency Director Ernie Baggett told CNN Friday afternoon.
In adjacent Dallas County, a huge tornado caused widespread destruction in Selma, home to about 17,000 people. At a Selma tax office, Deborah Brown and others had to rush to safety after seeing what looked like a tornado rolling down the street, she said.
While the damage was “tremendous,” no fatalities have been reported, Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said Friday. After conducting an aerial tour of the damage, the mayor grew emotional as he talked about the communities that were hit – including the neighborhood he grew up in that was ravaged. “It’s tough,” he said. “A lot of people are hurting. The devastation is real. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The Selma tornado was rated EF-2, the weather service said. Wind intensity in neighboring Autauga County, meanwhile, was rated EF-3, meaning gusts of at least 136 mph – the weather service said. “While these areas of damage were caused by the same storm, it is not yet known if there was a continuous path of damage,” the weather service said. A day earlier, a weather service meteorologist said the Selma tornado may have been on the ground for at least 50 miles.
In central Georgia’s Butts County, a 5-year-old was killed when a tree fell on top of a car, the county coroner’s office said. A state employee also was killed by falling debris while responding to the storms. Thursday’s severe storms also left about 40,000 homes and businesses still in the dark Friday morning across Georgia and Alabama, according to tracking site PowerOutage.us.
The storms marked the latest bout of severe weather to turn deadly in the US as experts point to the human-induced climate crisis as a cause for such extreme events. Millions in California are reeling from weeks of flooding rain that has killed at least 18 people and left thousands without power.
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