Storm toll at 20; searches go on

Georgians tell of death, survival in South’s tornado outbreak

Mike Jones walks Monday through an Albany, Ga., neighborhood that was damaged by a tornado.
Mike Jones walks Monday through an Albany, Ga., neighborhood that was damaged by a tornado.

ALBANY, Ga. -- A midwinter onslaught of tornadoes and thunderstorms over the weekend was blamed for at least 20 deaths across the Deep South, where rescue crews spent Monday searching shattered homes for victims.

Among them were three people killed at Big Pine Estates, the mobile home park in Albany, Ga., where the Mitchell family lives.

A tornado warning on television sent Anthony Mitchell, his pregnant wife and their three children scrambling for what little shelter their mobile home could provide. They crouched in a hallway as the twister started taking their home apart piece by piece.

"The windows exploded, the doors flew off the hinges, the sheetrock started to rip off the walls and fly out the windows," Mitchell said. "The trailer started to lift up. And about that time a tree fell on the trailer, and I think that's what held the trailer in place from flying away."

A twister slammed into the southwestern Georgia city of 76,000 people on Sunday afternoon, carving a path of destruction a half-mile wide in places and leaving the landscape strewn with broken trees and mangled sheet metal. Few of the roughly 200 homes at the trailer park escaped damage from the tornado, which was rated by forecasters as at least an EF-2, meaning it packed winds of 111 to 135 mph.

In addition to the three dead at Big Pine Estates, a fourth body was discovered at a home just outside the trailer park.

Mitchell lost his home and marveled that he didn't lose his life, too.

"Something helped us walk out the front door of the house," he said. "There's some people who weren't fortunate enough to have a front door to walk out of."

Georgia reported 15 deaths Sunday, and four people died Saturday in Mississippi. In northern Florida, a woman died after a tree crashed into her home in Lake City as a storm passed through.

The National Weather Service said 39 possible tornadoes were reported over the weekend. The agency sent out teams to examine the damage and confirm how many of the storms were twisters, which can happen any time of year but are far more common in the spring and early summer.

A day after the violent weather passed, search crews looked for people and pets in the Albany trailer park, stepping over tree limbs and ducking under splintered pine trunks as they went from home to home. One team discovered a terrified dog in a smashed-in trailer, where it had spent the night. Authorities said the pet owner's fate was unknown.

In rural Cook County, about 60 miles southeast of Albany, Aretha Perry prayed aloud in front of the First Baptist Church, where a shelter was set up after an apparent tornado destroyed about half the homes at the Sunshine Acres mobile home park.

Perry said her niece and nephew both lived there, and she drove out to try to help them after hearing the park had been hit.

"We were looking, looking," Perry said, "but couldn't find them."

The coroner later confirmed that seven people were found dead at Sunshine Acres. Perry said her two relatives were among them.

"They died in the storm trying to save her grandchildren," she said, adding that the children survived. "I know they've gone on to Jesus."

At Sunshine Acres on Monday, crews with cadaver dogs checked the wreckage of mobile homes for anyone dead or alive. Authorities kept residents from returning for a second day.

Devocheo Williams, 29, said his home was demolished the day after he moved in.

"The whole trailer park was gone in 15 seconds," Williams said, describing a funnel cloud that appeared to loop back around and hit the neighborhood a second time. "It looked like a ball of fire was going 100 mph."

Williams said he saw a little girl picked up by the winds and tossed into a ditch. Nearby, the girl's mother and a baby were trapped in rubble. He said he helped dig them out.

Elsewhere, the tail end of a winter storm system lashed California with thunderstorms, hail and severe winds Monday after breaking rainfall records and washing out roads. At least four people died, three were missing and several others were rescued from raging floodwaters during three storms in four days.

Anguished relatives gathered along a creek in Alameda County southeast of San Francisco as searchers looked for an 18-year-old woman whose car plunged into the rushing waterway after a wreck late Saturday.

Two other people remained missing after being reported in waters off Pebble Beach on Saturday. The search along the Monterey Peninsula was suspended.

In Los Angeles, receding stormwaters revealed a body in dense vegetation at a regional park in the Harbor City area. The cause of death was not known, but the Fire Department said the body may be that of a man reported missing Sunday night.

Heavy snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains triggered an avalanche that shut down a highway just west of Lake Tahoe. Officials warned of continuing avalanche danger at all elevations of the Sierra. In northern Nevada, schools were canceled after more than a half-foot of snow fell near Reno.

Northwest of Los Angeles, in Santa Barbara County, a thunderstorm brought ashore pounding hail and a tornado warning was briefly issued. No tornadoes were reported, but wind gusts topped 60 mph.

In two proclamations Monday, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for 50 California counties.

Information for this article was contributed by Russ Bynum and Christopher Weber of The Associated Press.

A Section on 01/24/2017

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