Tornado outbreak rips across Deep South; at least 5 dead
OHATCHEE, ALA. >> Tornadoes and severe storms tore through the Deep South, killing at least five people as strong winds splintered trees, wrecked homes and downed power lines.
The tornado outbreak rolled into western Georgia early Friday. One large, dangerous tornado moved through Newnan and surrounding communities in the Atlanta metro area, meteorologists said.
A day earlier, a sheriff in eastern Alabama said a tornado cut a diagonal line through his county, striking mostly rural areas.
“Five people lost their lives and for those families, it will never be the same,” Calhoun County Sheriff Matthew Wade said at briefing Thursday evening.
Calhoun County Coroner Pat Brown on Friday identified the dead to Al.com as Joe Wayne Harris, 74, James William Geno, 72, Ebonique Harris, 28, Emily Myra Wilborn, 72, and Barbara Harris, 69.
One of the victims in the hard-hit town of Ohatchee in eastern Alabama, a small community of about 1,170 people, was Dwight Jennings’s neighbor. The 72-year-old Geno was known to his friends as J.W. and in his youth had been a rodeo bull rider. Geno could make anything out of wood, Jennings said, and he loved to catfish. The two of them had planned to go fishing this weekend, Jennings said. Jennings spent several hours searching for his friend’s dog before the animal was found alive, he said.
As many as eight tornadoes might have hit Alabama on Thursday, said John De Block, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Birmingham. Multiple twisters sprang from a “super cell” of storms that later moved into Georgia, he said.
Reports of tornado damage in the Newnan area began coming in shortly after midnight. Trees were toppled and power lines downed, knocking out service by the local utility.
Newnan police urged the public in a Facebook post to “get off the roads” while emergency officials surveyed the damage.
The bad weather stretched across the southern U.S., raising concerns of thunderstorms and flooding in parts of Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas. In Tennessee, emergency responders hospitalized one person in Sumner County, and the Nashville Fire Department posted photos on Twitter showing large trees down, damaged homes and streets blocked by debris.