A tornado roared into southeast Alabama on Sunday, killing at least 23 people and injuring several others, part of a severe storm system that caused catastrophic damage and unleashed other tornadoes around the southeast.
“Unfortunately our toll, as far as fatalities, does stand at 23 at the current time,” Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told WRBL-TV of the death toll.
He added that two people were in intensive care.
Photo: AFP / Justin Merritt, Instagram
Drones flying overheard equipped with heat-seeking devices had scanned the area for survivors, but the dangerous conditions halted the search late on Sunday, Jones said.
Jones said the twister traveled straight down a county road in the rural community of Beauregard and that the path of damage and destruction appeared at least 800m wide.
He said that single-family homes and mobile homes were destroyed, adding that some homes were reduced to slabs.
He had told reporters earlier that several people were taken to hospitals, some with “very serious injuries.”
Lee County Coroner Bill Harris said that he had to call in help from the state, because there were more bodies than his four-person office can handle.
The US National Weather Service confirmed late on Sunday a tornado with at least an F3 rating and a track at least 800m-wide caused the deadly destruction in Alabama. Although the statement did not give exact wind estimates, F3 storms typically are gauged at wind speeds of 254 to 331kph.
Numerous tornado warnings were also posted across parts of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina on Sunday afternoon as the powerful storm system raced across the region.
Weather officials said they confirmed other tornadoes around the region by radar alone and would send teams out early yesterday to assess those and other storms.
In rural Talbotton, Georgia, a handful of people were injured by either powerful straight-line winds or a tornado that destroyed several mobile homes and damaged other buildings, Talbot County Emergency Management Agency Director Leigh Ann Erenheim said.
Televised broadcast news footage showed smashed buildings with rooftops blown away, cars overturned and debris everywhere. Trees had been snapped bare of branches.
Authorities said a tornado was confirmed by radar in the Florida Panhandle late on Sunday afternoon.
A portion of Interstate 10 on the Panhandle was blocked in one direction for a time in Walton County in the aftermath, said Don Harrigan, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.
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