Tornadoes wrecking homes around South fueled by record highs

WETUMPKA, ALA. >> Tornadoes damaged numerous homes, destroyed a fire station, briefly trapped people in a grocery store and ripped the roof off an apartment complex in Mississippi, while two people died as a tree crunched their mobile home in Alabama, authorities said Wednesday.

The National Weather Service had warned that strong twisters capable of carving up communities over long distances were possible as the storm front moved eastward from Texas. They were fueled by record high temperatures and threatened a stretch of the United States where more than 25 million people live.

A total of 73 tornado warnings and 120 severe thunderstorm warnings were issued from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, said Matthew Elliott, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

Significant tornado damage was evident in the Flatwood community north of Montgomery, Alabama, where two people were killed as a tree struck their home, said Christina Thornton, director of the Montgomery County Emergency Management Agency.

Others in the tight-knit community narrowly escaped with their lives: Caroline Bankston said she and Tim Wiseman were watching the news and trying to figure out where the twister was when she looked out the window and realized it was on top of them. They ran to a safer corner as the roof caved in, burying their sofa in debris.

“We just prayed, prayed, prayed, ‘Please God Please take care of us. Please,’ and he did. You can replace stuff, but you can’t replace a person,” Bankston said, her voice still trembling. “We were just sitting there on the couch. Thank God we moved.”

Search and rescue teams would continue going door to door until everyone’s accounted for, Montgomery County Sheriff Derrick Cunningham said.

Isaiah Sankey, who represents Flatwood as vice chairman of the Montgomery County Commission, expressed grief for the lives lost and vowed that installing storm shelters will be a priority.

“When we do rebuild, we will have storm shelters,” Sankey said. “We have got to prepare for these unforeseen circumstances.”

In the west Alabama town of Eutaw, large sections of the roof were missing from an apartment complex, displacing 15 families in the middle of the night, and power lines and trees were “all over the road,” Eutaw Police Chief Tommy Johnson told WBRC-TV.