Destructive tornadoes hit the United States: seven dead in Alabama and Georgia

The climatic misadventures of 2023 seem to give the United States no respite. After the polar cold wave in the east and the floods in California, the country woke up this Friday to the news that at least seven people had died in Alabama and Georgia after a severe storm, with tornadoes and high winds, which also caused damage to buildings and left a trail of destroyed cars.

Authorities said it was only this Friday that other victims would be searched for and a clearer idea of ​​the extent of the damage would be obtained. After the storm began to subside Thursday night, tens of thousands of customers lost power in the two states.

Six of the deaths occurred in Autauga County, Alabama, 40 miles northeast of Selma, a town identified with the 1960s civil rights movement.

It is also estimated that some 40 homes were damaged or destroyed from a tornado that moved 20 miles through two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, director of emergency management for the county.

At night, the city of Selma turned on their cellphone lights to hold a sidewalk meeting where they declared a state of emergency.

At least 12 people were seriously injuredso they were taken to the hospital by emergency crews, Baggett said Associated press. He said crews focused Thursday night on clearing downed trees to look for people who might need help.

“This is the worst I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said of the damage.

The situation in Georgia

A motorist died in Georgia when a tree fell on a vehicle in JacksonButts County coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county, the storm derailed a freight train, authorities said.

Authorities in Griffin, south of Atlanta, told local media that several people were trapped inside an apartment complex after trees fell on it.

A Hobby Lobby store in the city lost part of its roof, while in another part of the city, firefighters freed a man who had been trapped for hours under a tree that had fallen on his home. The city enforced a curfew from 10pm Thursday to 6am Friday.

The National Weather Service said Thursday that there have been preliminary reports of 33 different tornadoes across the country. Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina were the states that received tornado warnings.

These tornado reports have not yet been confirmed and some of them may later be classified as wind damage once the assessments are made in the next few days.

The tornado that hit Selma tore its way through downtown, leaving extensive damage on display: collapsed brick buildings, uprooted trees, overturned automobiles on their sides, and dangling power lines.

Columns of black smoke from a fire could also be seen rising over the city. It wasn’t immediately known whether the storm caused the fire.

The situation in Alabama

Selma Mayor James Perkins said no deaths had been reported, but several people were seriously injured. Rescuers were still assessing the damage and authorities were hoping to get an aerial view of the city on Friday morning.

“We have a lot of downed power lines,” he said. “There is a lot of danger on the streets.”

Mattie Moore was among Selma residents who went looking for boxes of food donated by a charity in the downtown area.

“Thank God we’re here. It’s like something you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.

Selma, a city of about 18,000, is located about 50 miles west of Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. It was a culmination of the civil rights movement and the site where Alabama state troops viciously attacked black suffrage protesters as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.

Malesha McVay recorded video of the giant tornado, which went black as it leveled house after house.

“It would hit a house and black smoke would come out of it,” he said. “It was terrifying.”

About 40,000 homes lost power in Alabama Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.

in georgia, about 86,000 homes were left without electricity after the storm system impacted a county level just south of Atlanta.

School Friday has been canceled in school systems in at least six Georgia counties, enrolling a total of 90,000 students.

Source: Associated Press