Georgia girl dies when storm sends carport leg through roof
ATLANTA — By all accounts, Sarah Radney was safe inside her grandparents’ home when Hurricane Michael roared into southwest Georgia.
If the family feared anything, it was probably falling trees — not a carport next to the house.
In what could only be described as a freak accident, authorities say Michael’s powerful winds lifted the portable structure high into the air and slammed it back down on the house. When it landed, one of the legs tore through the roof, fatally striking the 11-year-old girl in the head.
Emergency responders weren’t able to reach the home until after midnight because power lines and trees blocked the roads. When they finally made it, they took Sarah’s grandmother to a hospital, where she was treated for a punctured lung, a broken rib and flesh wounds.
Sarah loved to perform, her father said. When she started sixth grade this year, she began playing the trumpet in the school band and had recently been in a play with the drama club.
Michael dropped from a Category 4 hurricane to a Category 1 as it arrived in Georgia, and later weakened to a tropical storm. Still, it caused havoc in parts of the state, spinning off tornadoes and leaving downed trees, damaged buildings and power outages behind as it marched toward the Carolinas.
The devastation inflicted by Hurricane Michael came into focus Thursday with rows upon rows of homes found smashed to pieces, and rescue crews began making their way into the stricken areas in hopes of accounting for hundreds of people who may have stayed behind.
At least three deaths were blamed on Michael, the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in over 50 years, and it wasn’t done yet: Though reduced to a tropical storm, it brought flash flooding to North Carolina and Virginia, soaking areas still recovering from Hurricane Florence.
Under a perfectly clear blue sky, families living along the Florida Panhandle emerged from darkened shelters and hotels to a perilous landscape of shattered homes and shopping centres, beeping security alarms, wailing sirens and hovering helicopters.
Gov. Rick Scott said the Panhandle woke up to “unimaginable destruction.”
“So many lives have been changed forever. So many families have lost everything,” he said.
The full extent of Michael’s fury was only slowly becoming clear, with some of the hardest-hit areas difficult to reach because of roads blocked by debris or water.
A 130-kilometre stretch of Interstate 10, the main east-west route along the Panhandle, was closed.
Some of the worst damage occurred in Mexico Beach, a town of about 1,000 people where the hurricane crashed ashore Wednesday as a Category 4 monster with 250 kph winds. Entire blocks of homes near the beach were obliterated.