NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–Severe storms and dozens of tornadoes killed at least 35 people in five states, injuring more than 100 and leaving a trail of flattened homes and businesses.
The Tennessee Baptist Convention activated disaster relief units statewide to offer aid and assistance to victims in dozens of communities.
A National Weather Service meteorologist said it was the worst outbreak of tornadoes in years.
At latest count, 17 people have been killed in Tennessee, 11 in Alabama, five in Ohio, one in Pennsylvania and one in Mississippi during storms that began this weekend.
About 150 people were unaccounted for in Tennessee after a storm slammed into the remote town of Mossy Grove.
“It’s just been wiped off the face of the earth,” Cecil Whaley, a Tennessee emergency management official, told Baptist Press.
Brian Holloway, who pastors a church near Mossy Grove, told Baptist Press the devastation was unbelievable.
“The heart of Mossy Grove is gone,” he told Baptist Press. “Huge oak trees about six feet in diameter were sucked out of the ground and tossed down the road.”
CNN meteorologist Arch Kennedy said the reason for the onslaught of severe weather was a strong jet stream moving from west to east and strong surface winds moving north from the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in a wind shear.
“This is a storm system you see once in a decade,” Kennedy said.
TENNESSEE
Two people were killed — one of them a 10-year-old boy – in Manchester, about 75 miles southeast of Nashville. Members at Hillcrest Baptist Church helped rescue the boy’s mother and provided care to injured neighbors.
Two hundred homes were destroyed in Morgan County after the tornado cut a mile-and-a-half-wide swath through the countryside, Whaley told Baptist Press.
Eighty people were injured statewide, including 18 individuals in Coffee County, he said, where a tornado destroyed at least 20 homes and two tractor-trailers.
A married couple was killed in Montgomery County when their mobile home was picked up by winds and destroyed.
In Jackson, hundreds of terrified Union University students crammed into hallways when an F-1 tornado ripped through the campus, damaging dorms, an educational building and more than 500 automobiles. The National Weather Service said the tornado had sustained winds of 110 mph when it hit Union.
At least a dozen people were brought to a hospital in Carroll County, between Memphis and Nashville, with minor injuries from the storm, a hospital spokesman said. Trees and power lines were brought down there, and entire walls of homes lay on the ground after the structures were destroyed.
ALABAMA
Alabama was hard hit as storms claimed at least nine lives in Walker County, northwest of Birmingham. Timothy Murray, a student minister at the First Baptist Church of Carbon Hill, told Baptist Press the city was shut down and police were not allowing anyone into or out of the town.
“There are trees and power lines down all over the city,” Murray said.
Carbon Hill Junior High School was described as “blown away.” Buildings were damaged, people were trapped in their homes, and one emergency worker was hit by a live powerline.
There were many injuries reported throughout the state, as well as damage to two churches, farm structures, a high school and power lines.
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(BP) photos posted in the BP Photo Library at http://www.bpnews.net. Photo titles: FRATERNITY HOUSE DAMAGED, FAMILY PHOTOS, GRANDPARENTS MOURN, GRANDMOTHER SEARCHES, CHURCH SURVIVES TWISTER and TIM CALLAWAY.
