Severe weather leaves at least 7 dead throughout the South
MADILL, Okla. — Severe weather blew through the South on Thursday after killing at least seven people in Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, including a worker at a factory hit by an apparent tornado, a man whose car was blown off the road and a man who went outside to grab a trash can and was swept away in a flood.
More than 150,000 businesses and homes from Texas to Georgia were without power as the severe weather blew eastward, according to poweroutage.us.
Winds peeled roofing material off a church in Alabama and sent an awning crashing onto a car at a gas station. In Adel, Georgia, pieces of metal flew off a building during a possible twister.
In Anniston, Alabama, a firefighter and an emergency medical worker were injured when part of a tree fell atop them while they were rescuing a person trapped inside a home by a tree that fell during a storm, Anniston EMS said in a statement on its Facebook page.
The workers and the resident were all taken to a hospital, but none of the injuries was life-threatening, the agency said.
Forecasters said additional damage was possible from another wave of storms.
Earlier, an apparent tornado killed three people and injured 20 to 30 more in and around the southeast Texas town of Onalaska. Suspected twisters destroyed 46 homes and damaged another 245 in the surrounding area, according to Polk County Judge Sydney Murphy.
Nine suspected tornadoes raked southern Oklahoma, National Weather Service meteorologist Alex Zwink said. One of them caused widespread damage across Madill, near the Red River and the Texas border, said Donny Raley, the city’s emergency manager.