Like ‘giant knife,’ tornadoes slash eastern Alabama, killing 23

BEAUREGARD, Ala., (Reuters) - Alabama residents and rescue teams yesterday sifted through the splintered remnants of homes torn apart by a string of tornadoes that killed at least 23 people, including three children, in the deadliest burst of twisters to hit the United States since 2013.

The tornadoes, spawned by a late-winter “supercell” thunderstorm, ripped through Lee County on Sunday with cyclonic winds of up to 170 miles (274 km) per hour, at step four of the six-step Enhanced Fujita (EF) scale of tornado strength.

Mobile homes were tossed on their sides and ripped open, their contents strewn over a ravaged landscape littered with debris and gnarled, uprooted trees. In some places, shreds of houses hung from the limbs of the few trees left standing.

“It looks almost as if someone took a giant knife and just scraped the ground. There are slabs where homes formerly stood, debris everywhere, trees are snapped,” Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones told a morning news conference.

At least three twisters struck the area, in eastern Alabama near the Georgia border, within a few hours on Sunday afternoon.

The worst of the damage and all of the known fatalities occurred in and around the tiny community of Beauregard, about 10 miles (16 km) southeast of Auburn, said Chris Darden, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service office in Birmingham.

Besides one EF-4 tornado, storm trackers have confirmed two smaller twisters classified as EF-1, each of which packed winds of up to 110 mph (177 km per hour), according to Darden. “We’ll be examining more areas tomorrow,” he said.