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At least nine people are dead and the toll is expected to grow after more than a dozen tornadoes tore through the Southeastern U.S. on Thursday.
Seven deaths were reported in Autauga County, Alabama, northwest of Montgomery, according to county Emergency Management Agency Director Ernie Baggett. Six of the deaths were reported Thursday, and the seventh was confirmed a day later.
In Georgia, a 5-year-old boy was killed when a tree struck the car he was in. The second fatality in Georgia was a Department of Transportation employee who was responding to storm damage, Governor Brian Kemp said in a news conference Friday.
Kemp said that damage from multiple tornadoes was seen across Georgia.
“The storm moved all across our state unfortunately, it’s been a tragic night and morning in our state,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous environment.”
Search and rescue efforts are underway across the Southeast as officials fear the death toll may rise.
In Alabama’s Autauga County, crews resumed surveying the damage and have discovered at least 40 homes that were completely destroyed or are uninhabitable, Baggett said.
He said he’s never seen anything like this before in Autauga County.
“It’s complete devastation,” he said. “There’s some, a couple of our county roads that there’s only one or two homes left that may be livable.”
Drone video revealed extensive damage in Selma and Greensboro, Alabama, where roofs were torn off and trees knocked down.
In downtown Selma, some areas are littered with power poles, trees and some roads are completely blocked.
The National Weather Service office in Birmingham, Alabama, said it received “a lot of devastating reports of damage” and will be surveying the damage in the coming days.
So far, an EF2 tornado, called the Delmar tornado, was confirmed in Winston County, north of Selma, signifying it had three-second gusts of 111 to 135 mph, according to the agency. Delmar had an estimated peak wind of 125 mph and its path width was about 425 years.
EF2 damage was also confirmed in Selma and at least EF3 damage in Autauga County, meaning there were three-second gusts of 136 to 165 mph.
“While these areas of damage were caused by the same storm, it is not yet known if there was a continuous path of damage,” The National Weather Service said.
In Georgia, multiple departments, including the state’s Emergency Management Agency, are responding and assessing damage. The Department of Public Safety helped rescue students who were trapped at a middle school overnight and reunite them with their parents, according to Colonel Chris Wright.
Georgia’s governor along with Lt. Governor Burt Jones took a helicopter tour of the damage Friday.
At least 33,400 home and businesses in Alabama and Georgia remained without power Friday afternoon, according to Poweroutage.us.
Minyvonne Burke, Steve Strouss, Doha Madani, Phil Helsel, Nicole Duarte and Michelle Acevedo contributed.
