Trump offers Georgia disaster aid

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, speaking ahead of the swearing-in ceremony Sunday afternoon for his senior staff, said he had spoken to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal about the storms and “expressed our sincere condolences.”

“We’ll be helping out the state of Georgia,” Trump said.

He also said Florida and Alabama had been affected but did not mention the deadly devastation in Mississippi on Saturday.

Tornado damage near Hattiesburg cut across a 15-mile area, prompting Republican Gov. Phil Bryant to declare a state of emergency and leading officials to estimate that damage could soar above $200 million.

“They all got hit hard,” Trump said Sunday. “The tornadoes were vicious and powerful and strong.” Highway 122,” Brooks County Coroner Michael Miller said. “I don’t know if it rolled or was lifted, but it blocked the entire highway.”

Georgia emergency officials in a news release said two people were also killed in nearby Berrien County.

While the central part of the U.S. has a fairly defined tornado season — the spring — the risk of tornadoes “never really goes to zero” for most of the year in the southeast, said Patrick Marsh of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

January tornado outbreaks are rare but not unprecedented, particularly in the South. Data from the Storm Prediction Center shows that, over the past decade, the nation has seen an average 38 tornadoes in January, ranging from a high of 84 in 2008 to just four in 2014.