USA Today, by Susan Miller and Doyle Rice: Ferocious winds walloped the East Coast on Monday [April 13th] after a harrowing Easter night that saw people huddled in basements, closets, and tubs as tornadoes raged across the South, leaving at least 30 dead.
It’s the nation’s deadliest tornado outbreak in six years, since April 2014, when 35 people were killed in the central and southern U.S., the Storm Prediction Center said.
Destructive winds were reported across the East on Monday [April 13th], the Weather Channel said, a day after at least 40 reported tornadoes pounded several states. Millions of residents remained under high-wind warnings late Monday, but no other tornadoes were reported.
The death toll from the storms so far is staggering: Eleven people were killed in Mississippi; nine were found dead in South Carolina, and six more died in northwest Georgia. Others died under falling trees or inside collapsed buildings in Arkansas and North Carolina.
In Mississippi and Louisiana, the system spawned at least 13 radar-confirmed tornadoes Sunday [April 12th] that damaged up to 300 homes and buildings. More than 60,000 customers were without power across the two states.
The Chattanooga, Tennessee, area and several counties in northwest Georgia appeared to take the brunt of the destruction. Murray County, Georgia, Fire Chief Dewayne Bain told WAGA-TV that two mobile home parks were severely damaged.
Five people were killed and five others hospitalized; another person was killed when a tree fell on a home in Cartersville, Georgia, the station reported.
At least 14 people were hospitalized in the Chattanooga area, where search and rescue teams from at least 10 fire departments were going door to door responding to more than 300 emergency calls, the fire department said.
The fierce storm system caused flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas overnight and knocked out electricity for nearly 1.3 million customers in a path from Texas to Maine, according to poweroutage.us.
The National Weather Service recorded hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines.
Fatalities were reported across four counties in Mississippi, according to local authorities. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency.
Prophetic Link:
“In fires, in floods, in earthquakes, in the fury of the great deep, in calamities by sea and by land, the warning is given that God’s Spirit will not always strive with men.” Last Day Events, page 26.