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.
Two people were killed in the Flatwood community just north of the city of Montgomery. “They were in their home that was struck by a tree due to the tornado,” 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.”
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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.”
The NWS confirmed that tornadoes touched down in Mississippi. Lowndes County Emergency Management Agency Director Cindy Lawrence told NBC affiliate WTVA-TV the people inside the grocery store made it out safely, but the building was damaged. Images of the wreckage shared by NBC affiliate WTVA-TV showed homes and businesses damaged and a fire station shredded.
In the west Alabama town of Eutaw, video from NBC affiliate WPMI showed the destruction of an apartment complex where several families lived. The building's roof and several walls were blown off, exposing bedrooms inside apartments and debris around the property. No severe injuries were reported and 15 displaced families were moved to a shelter at a local high school.
“We’ve got power lines, trees just all over the road,” said Eutaw Police Chief Tommy Johnson. “In the morning when we get a little daylight, we’re going to do a door-by-door search to make sure no one is trapped inside or anything like that.”
A suspected tornado damaged numerous homes during the night in Hale County, Alabama, where the emergency director said more than a third of the people live in highly vulnerable mobile homes.
“I have seen some really nice mobile homes tied down, but they just don’t stand a chance against a tornado,” Hale County Emergency Management Director Russell Weeden told WBRC just ahead of the storm.
Two other people were injured as the storm tore apart homes in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff Clay Bennett told KNOE-TV.
Hail stones crashed against the windows of City Hall in the small town of Tchula, Mississippi, where sirens blared and the mayor and other residents took cover. “It was hitting against the window, and you could tell that it was nice-sized balls of it,” Mayor Ann Polk said after the storm passed.
High winds downed power lines, and flooding was a hazard as more than 5 inches (13 centimeters) of rain fell within several hours in some places. More than 50,000 customers in Mississippi and Alabama were without electricity Wednesday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility outages.
Forecasters had been warning of the potential for a tornado outbreak for several days ahead of the storm. Elliott, who coordinates the warnings, said it took a lot of work to get the word out as people celebrated the holidays, and it seemed that people were taking the threat seriously.
“It’s a very vulnerable part of the country for tornadoes -- especially tornadoes after dark,” Elliott said. “We all have to work together to get the best results on these types of events that could potentially lead to lots of devastation.”
Record high temperatures in Texas and Louisiana intensified the storm front before it moved into Mississippi and Alabama, forecasters said Wednesday.
Shreveport, Louisiana heated up to 81 degrees (27.2 Celsius) on Tuesday; and Tyler, Texas hit 82 degrees (27.8 Celsius), according to the National Weather Service in Shreveport. Both those marks broke the old record of 80, set in 1949, the weather service said.
Jeff E. Martin and Michael Warren in Atlanta, Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas; Michael Goldberg in Jackson, Mississippi; and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
