Survivors emerge from wreckage after Southern storms kill 9

SELMA, ALA.

Stunned residents tried to salvage belongings, and rescue crews pulled survivors from beneath collapsed houses this weekend in the aftermath of a tornado-spawning storm system that killed at least nine people as it barreled across parts of Georgia and Alabama.

The widespread destruction came into view a day after violent storms flipped mobile homes into the air, sent uprooted trees crashing through buildings, snapped trees and utility poles and derailed a freight train. Those who emerged with their lives gave thanks as they searched the wreckage to find anything worth saving.

“God was sure with us,” Tracey Wilhelm said as she looked over the shattered remnants of her mobile home in Alabama’s Autauga County.

She was at work Thursday when a tornado lifted her mobile home off its foundation and dumped it several feet away in a heap of rubble. Her husband and their five dogs scrambled into a shed that stayed intact, she said. Rescue workers later found them inside unharmed.

A search crew also found five people unharmed but trapped in a storm shelter after a wall from the adjacent house fell onto it, Autauga County Coroner Buster Barber said. Someone inside had a phone and kept calling for help.

The National Weather Service, which was working to confirm the twisters, said suspected tornado damage was reported in at least 14 counties in Alabama and 14 in Georgia. Temperatures were forecast to plunge below freezing overnight in hard-hit areas of both states, where more than 30,000 homes and businesses remained without power at sundown.

The twister blamed for killing at least seven people in rural Autauga County left damage consistent with an EF3 tornado, which is just two steps below the most powerful category of twister. The tornado had winds of at least 136 mph, the weather service said.

Downtown Selma, about 40 miles to the southwest, also sustained severe damage before the worst of the weather moved across Georgia south of Atlanta.

James Carter’s Selma home was damaged when the tornado tore through the city.

“I was at my house and I started hearing a little sound like a train. The closer it got, the louder it got. By the time it got over the house, the whole house was just shaking. My mom, she was laying in the bed, and I tried to put my body on top of her to protect her,” Carter said.

At least 12 people were taken to hospitals, Ernie Baggett, Autauga County’s emergency management director, said as crews cut through downed trees looking for survivors.

About 40 homes were destroyed or damaged, including several mobile homes that were launched into the air, he said.

“They weren’t just blown over,” he said. “They were blown a distance.”

A 5-year-old child riding in a vehicle was killed by a falling tree in central Georgia’s Butts County, said Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director James Stallings. He said a parent who was driving suffered critical injuries.

Elsewhere, a state Department of Transportation worker was killed while responding to storm damage, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said.

The governor said the storm inflicted damage statewide, with some of the worst around Troup County near the Georgia-Alabama line, where more than 100 homes were hit. At least 12 people were treated at a hospital in Spalding County, south of Atlanta, where the weather service confirmed at least two tornadoes struck.