At least 7 dead as storm, tornado hits southern US
At least six people were killed in central Alabama as a massive storm system hit the south on Thursday. A tornado tore off the roofs of homes and uprooted trees in historic Selma. In Georgia, dozens of people lost power due to high winds. Thousands.
In Autauga County, Alabama, 66 kilometers northeast of Selma, at least six people were confirmed dead and an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by the tornado that cut a 32-kilometer path across two rural areas. , said Ernie Baggett, the county emergency. Managing Director.
Baggett told the Associated Press that multiple mobile homes were launched into the air and at least 12 people were seriously injured and taken to hospital by emergency responders. He said the crew was focused on Thursday night clearing up fallen trees to search for people who might need help.
“It really did a lot of damage. This is the worst I’ve seen in this county,” said Baggett.
In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell over a car in Jackson during a storm, said Butts County coroner Lacey Prue. Officials said it appeared to have pulled a freight train off the tracks.
Officials in Griffin, south of Atlanta, told local news outlets that multiple people were trapped inside an apartment complex after the tree fell. Freed Griffin men who were also locked in time. Students were detained at four middle schools for parents to pick them up after the high school was damaged and authorities ruled that bus services were unsafe. rice field. The City of Griffin has imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 6 a.m. Friday.
At least six Georgia County school systems on the south end of the Atlanta subway canceled classes on Friday. A total of 90,000 students are enrolled in these systems.
Nationally, there were 33 separate tornado reports from the National Weather Service as of Thursday night, with a handful of tornado warnings still in force in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. However, the reports have yet to be confirmed and some of them may be classified as wind damage after an assessment is made in the coming days.
In Selma, a city steeped in civil rights history, a tornado swept across a downtown area, knocking down brick buildings, uprooting oak trees, overturning cars and leaving power lines down. rice field. Thick black smoke rises from a burning fire. It was not immediately clear if the storm had caused the blaze.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities were reported but several people were seriously injured. I wanted to see it.
“There are a lot of power lines that have gone black,” he said. “There are many dangers on the road.”
Amid widespread power outages, the Selma City Council used mobile phone lights to hold sidewalk meetings and declare a state of emergency. A high school was opened as an evacuation center, officials said.
Mattie Moore was one Selma resident who picked up a boxed meal provided by a downtown charity.
“Thank God we’re here. It’s like what you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.
Selma is a city of approximately 18,000 people located about 80 kilometers west of Montgomery, the capital of Alabama. It was a flashpoint for the civil rights movement, and was where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked blacks claiming the right to vote as they marched over Edmund’s Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.
After the tornado had passed, she heard children crying as she came out of her house. She and her mother encouraged the children to keep screaming until they found the two of her on the roof of the damaged apartment building.
She estimated the children to be about 1 and 4 years old. Both are fine, she said via Facebook Messenger.
Maresha McVeigh drove parallel to the tornado with her family. She said she suddenly turned her around when she was less than two kilometers from her house.
“We stopped and prayed. We followed and prayed,” she said. “It was 100% God’s turn just before it hit my house.”
She took a video of a giant twister. This giant twister is swept from house to house turning black.
“It would hit the house and billow black smoke,” she said. “It was very scary.”
About 40,000 customers in Alabama lost power Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks power outages across the country. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after a storm system cut a path across county layers just south of Atlanta.
A storm has hit Griffin, south of Atlanta, and winds have damaged a shopping area, local news outlets reported. A Hobby Lobby store lost part of its roof and at least one of his cars was overturned in a nearby Walmart parking lot.
Damage has also been reported in Douglas and Cobb counties west of downtown Atlanta, with the Cobb County government posting a damage report showing a collapsed cinderblock wall at a warehouse outside Austell.
In Kentucky, Louisville’s National Weather Service confirmed an EF-1 tornado hit Mercer County and said crew members are investigating damage in several other counties.
A combination of three factors—the natural La Niña weather cycle, warming in the Gulf of Mexico likely linked to climate change, and the multi-decade migration of tornadoes from west to east—could push Thursday’s tornado outbreak. has become anomalous and damaging, Victor Genzini said. A professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
Gencini said the La Niña, which cooled parts of the Pacific and changed weather around the world, was responsible for creating the wavy jet stream that pushed the cold front through. But not enough to create a tornado. All you need is water.
The southeastern air is usually quite dry at this time of year, but the dew point was twice normal. This is likely due to unusually warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, which are likely affected by climate change. That dampness hit the cold front and everything was in order, Gencini said.
https://www.voanews.com/a/storms-tornadoes-slam-us-south-killing-at-least-7-/6916754.html At least 7 dead as storm, tornado hits southern US