Alabama Tornadoes: Death Toll Rises to 22 as Severe Storms Hit South

By Staff, Agencies

The first thing Scott Fillmer noticed was the overwhelming smell of pine trees. The trees littered his front yard just outside Beauregard, Ala., after deadly tornadoes whipped through Lee County on Sunday afternoon.

He opened his front door to find two power lines and a mattress lying in his driveway. His patio furniture was hanging from the surviving trees. A car bumper had flown into his pasture, and jagged slabs of wood sprinkled the lawn. Fillmer, 48, got in his tractor and grabbed a chain saw, and then he saw the rest of it: The leveled mobile homes. The dilapidated buildings missing their roofs.

“You didn’t realize how bad it was until you got on the road,” he said. “Now it looks like it’s one of the worst tornadoes.”

At least 23 people were killed, including children, in America’s deadliest tornado outbreak in six years after twisters tore through Alabama, Georgia and Florida, Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said. The two tornadoes that touched down in Lee County on Sunday wrought a trail of “catastrophic” damage, leaving an untold number of people without homes and in shelters and countless others mourning their loved ones.

Jones said he fears the death toll may only continue to rise as recovery efforts continue Monday.

“We’ve done everything we feel like we can do this evening,” he said. “The area is just very, very hazardous to put anybody into at this point in time.”

Sunday’s tornadoes were the deadliest in the United States since May 20, 2013, when a category EF-5 tornado struck Moore, Okla., killing 24 people and leaving more than 200 injured, according to data from the Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center. Ten people died in tornadoes in the US throughout all of 2018. Tornadoes also broke out elsewhere in the Southeast on Sunday, including in several counties in Georgia and one in Florida, but none were as severe as in Lee County.

By the end of the night, Jones said some people were still missing. Others had been transported to the hospital with “very serious injuries”; the East Alabama Medical Center announced it had received more than 40 patients, with more coming.

The threat of severe weather continued into the late-night hours. A tornado watch was in effect for much of eastern Georgia, including Athens, Augusta and Savannah. The tornado watch also covered a large area of South Carolina, including the cities of Charleston and Columbia.