Search resumes for tornado survivors in Alabama
BEAUREGARD, United States: Rescuers uncovered widespread damage in Alabama on Monday caused by two back-to-back tornadoes that ripped across the southern state, with the death toll of 23 expected to rise further.
“It looks almost as if someone took a giant knife and scraped the ground,” said Sheriff Jay Jones of Lee County. “There are slabs where homes formerly stood, there is debris everywhere, trees are snapped.”
He said some of the dead were children, including one just six years old. Such destructive devastation has not been seen for half a century in the state, according to the sheriff.
Another young victim, Taylor Thornton, died while visiting a friend in Lee County.
“She’s gone to heaven. She’s only eight years old. It feels not real,” her aunt Kay Thornton told NBC affiliate WSFA 12 before bursting into tears.
“We have several people who are still unaccounted for,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, we anticipate the number of fatalities may rise as the day goes on.”
Others were hospitalised, some with “very serious injuries.”
Search operations for those still missing had to be halted late Sunday due to hazardous conditions, but were renewed early Monday with agencies from across the state and from neighboring Georgia joining the hunt.
The swath of destruction left was 0.4 kilometres wide and stretched for the “several miles that it travelled on the ground,” according to Jones.
The powerful winds picked up a billboard from the Lee County Flea Market in Alabama and dumped it some 20 miles away, across the state line in Georgia, local media reported.
More than 6,000 homes were left without power in Alabama, according to PowerOutage.us, while 16,000 suffered outages in neighboring Georgia.
The search for missing people was focused in the area around Beauregard, about 60 miles east of the state capital Montgomery. — AFP