At least seven dead in Georgia and Alabama; there were 33 separate tornado reports from National Weather Service nationwide
A damaged home in the aftermath of severe weather, on Thursday, near Prattville, Alabama. Pic/AP
A massive storm system whipping up severe winds and spawning tornadoes cut a path across the U.S. South, killing at least seven people in Georgia and Alabama, where a twister damaged buildings and tossed cars in the streets of historic downtown Selma.
Authorities said a clearer picture of the extent of the damage and a search for additional victims would come Friday, when conditions were expected to clear. After the storm began easing Thursday night, tens of thousands of customers were without power across the two states.
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In Selma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights movement, the city council used lights from cellphones as they held a meeting on the sidewalk to declare a state of emergency.
Six of the deaths were recorded Autauga County, Alabama, 41 miles (66 kilometers) northeast of Selma, where an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by a tornado that cut a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path across two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, the county’s emergency management director. At least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett said. He said crews were focused Thursday night on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.
Also read: Powerful storms slam South; at least 6 killed in Alabama
“This is the worst that I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said of the damage. In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said.
In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said. Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports from the National Weather Service on Thursday, and Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina all saw tornado warnings for a time. The tornado reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in coming days.
Three factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
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