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SELMA (United States), Jan. 13 (AP) — Rescuers raced Friday to find any survivors trapped in the rubble after tornadoes ripped through parts of the South, killing victims in Alabama and Georgia. At least nine people were killed and the civil rights movement wreaked havoc on flashpoint Selma.
More damage was expected later in the day as authorities surveyed the scarred landscape. At least 35 possible tornado touchdowns were reported from multiple states, according to FEMA.
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Suspected tornado damage was reported in at least 14 counties in Alabama and five counties in Georgia, the National Weather Service, which is working to identify tornadoes, said.
Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were without power in both states, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.
A tornado cut a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path in two rural Alabama communities on Thursday before the worst of the weather cut through Georgia on a track south of Atlanta.
Authorities said search and rescue crews in Otoga County found a body near a badly damaged home after dawn. That death brought the death toll in the county about 40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Selma to seven.
At least 12 people were critically injured and needed to be taken to hospital, said Ernie Baggett, director of emergency management for Otoga County. Crews were cutting down fallen trees looking for survivors.
About 40 homes were destroyed or badly damaged, including several mobile homes thrown into the air, he said.
“They’re not just blown past,” he said, “they’re blown far.”
In Selma, a city engraved in the history of the civil rights movement, the city council met on the sidewalk with lights from cellphones and declared a state of emergency.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said Friday that a state Department of Transportation worker was killed while responding to storm damage. He did not provide further details.
Another death occurred in Butts County in central Georgia, where a passenger died when a tree fell on top of the vehicle, the coroner said. The storm appeared to knock a freight train off the track in the same county, officials said.
The storm hit Griffin, Georgia, south of Atlanta, as mourners gathered for a vigil at Peterson’s funeral home. There was a loud bang when a large tree fell on the building, and about 20 people scrambled for cover in restrooms and offices.
“When we came out, we were in complete shock,” said Sha-Meeka Peterson-Smith, the funeral home’s chief operating officer. “We heard everything but didn’t know how bad it was.”
The uprooted tree fell directly from the front of the building, destroying a viewing room, a lounge and a front office, she said. No one is hurt.
Griffin officials told local news outlets that multiple people were trapped inside the apartment complex after the tree fell. Firefighters have rescued a man who was pinned under a tree that fell on his house for hours after a Hobbys store lost part of its roof.
The tornado that hit Selma cut a wide avenue through downtown, toppling brick buildings, uprooting oak trees, tossing cars aside and dangling power lines.
Thick black smoke from a fire enveloped the city. It was not immediately clear whether the storm sparked the blaze.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said there were no reports of injuries, but several people were seriously injured. Officials hope to get a bird’s-eye view of the city on Friday morning.
“We’ve got a lot of downed power lines,” he said, “and there’s a lot of danger on the street.”
Mattie Moore was one of Selma residents receiving a packed meal from a downtown charity.
“Thank God we’re here. It’s like what you see on TV,” Moore said of the devastation.
Selma is a city of approximately 18,000 people located approximately 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Montgomery, Alabama’s capital. It was the spark that sparked the civil rights movement when, on March 7, 1965, state troopers viciously attacked blacks who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge for voting rights rather than violence.
Malesha McVay captured video of the massive tornado, which turned black as it swept home one after another.
“It would hit a house and the black smoke would spiral up,” she said. “too terrifying.”
Meteorology professor Victor Gensini said three factors — the natural La Niña weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely linked to climate change and the decades-long eastward shift of tornado activity — The unusual and devastating tornado outbreak that collectively caused Thursday’s outbreak was conducted by Northern Illinois University, which studies tornado trends.
La Niña, a phenomenon that cools parts of the Pacific Ocean and changes global weather, is a factor in the formation of undulating jet streams that bring cold fronts, Guncini said. But that wasn’t enough to spark a tornado outbreak. Another ingredient is moisture.
Usually the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year, but the dew point is twice normal, Guncini said, possibly because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which could be affected by climate change. Moisture hit the cold front, creating deadly storms.
In Kentucky, the Weather Service confirmed the EF-1 tornado hit Mercer County and said crews were investigating damage in several other counties. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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