VIOLENT STORMS CLAIM 18 LIVES
Mobile home park leveled, killing 7
ADEL, Ga. — A severe storm system that spun off apparent tornadoes, pulverized mobile homes and scattered other destruction around the Southeast has claimed at least 18 lives on a two-day assault on the region, authorities said.
The enormous system put millions of people in the South on edge during a weekend of violent weather that destroyed homes, downed trees and caused other damage in the hardest-hit communities from Mississippi to Georgia. The severe weather threat was still continuing Sunday night in some parts, extending into South Carolina and north Florida.
At least 14 people were killed Sunday in Georgia as the intense, fast-moving storms tore across the state throughout the day, with at least one deadly tornado reported before dawn and violent storms still rumbling after nightfall. Four people were killed Saturday in Mississippi when the system began to ramp up.
“There are houses just demolished,” said Norma Ford, who rushed out with other relatives Sunday evening after hearing a reported twister had overturned her nephew’s mobile home in the southwestern Georgia city of Albany, the region’s largest city with some 76,000 residents.
She said downed trees and powerlines made roads impassable, forcing them to walk the 2 miles to the mobile home park to check on her relatives. She said her nephew was fine, but several of his neighbors’ homes were destroyed.
Georgia’s latest three deaths were confirmed Sunday evening in Dougherty County where Albany is located, said a spokeswoman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. Search and rescue efforts were continuing Sunday night following reports of injuries and extensive damage.
Yet the day’s deadliest toll came before daybreak Sunday when an apparent tornado blew through a mobile home park in south Georgia — about 60 miles southeast of Albany — shearing away siding, upending homes and killing seven people.
Coroner Tim Purvis of south Georgia’s Cook County confirmed that seven people died at the mobile home park, where about roughly half of the 40 homes were “leveled.”
The other deaths in Georgia were reported elsewhere.
Not far from the mobile home park, 19-year-old Jenny Bullard wore a sling on her injured arm as she combed through the rubble of her family’s brick house. All that remained standing Sunday was the master bedroom and parts of the kitchen.
“It’s a horrible tragedy,” Bullard said. “But all this stuff can be replaced. We can’t replace each other. We’re extremely lucky.”
Bullard said she awoke before dawn Sunday to the sound of hail pounding the roof. When she went outside her bedroom door, she was knocked down by a collapsing wall in the hallway. She managed to get up and found her father calling for her, trapped under debris.
She pulled him free, and they found her mother in the master bedroom. They escaped by climbing over piles of furniture and debris where the wall to their home office once stood.