As darkness gave way to morning light, officials in Lee County, Alabama — where the deaths occurred — were assessing the extent of the destruction left in the wake of Sunday’s storms and were sorting through the debris in hopes of finding survivors.
At least one child was among the dead, officials said, and all of the fatalities occurred in the same general area, just south of the city of Opelika.
“We had several families that have probably lost everybody in their whole family,” Bill Harris, the Lee County coroner, told CNN on Monday.
The ages of those who died range from under 10 to the 70s and 80s, Harris said. He also relayed reports that at least 20 people were unaccounted for.
Dozens of people were sent to hospitals Sunday with injuries, with at least two in critical condition. The East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika had received more than 60 patients as of Sunday night, according to John Atkinson, a spokesman for the center.
The National Weather Service confirmed Sunday that at least one tornado at least a half-mile wide had touched down in the southern part of Lee County, with winds of 136 to 165 mph. Tornadoes were also reported to the south and east in Georgia and Florida.
Residents are waking up to survey the damage
At a Waffle House in Opelika, near the worst of the destruction, customers and employees traded tragic news about the storm and its aftermath Monday: Were their relatives OK? Did they have electricity? Was one highway or another passable?
“Is that open?” one woman asked while she waited at the counter. “It was closed last night,” the server replied sadly.
Sheriff Jay Jones of Lee County, speaking to CNN on Monday morning, said,"We have not had anything quite like this in our area ever, that I know of.”
How one man rode out the storm by sheltering at a gas station
Alex Miller, 27, was driving with two passengers from Savannah, Georgia, to his home in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sunday evening when they were alerted on their cellphones that tornadoes might be approaching. They stopped at a gas station in Columbus, Georgia, to let one wave of the storm system pass, and continued to head north, hoping to break through the worst of the weather during the lull.
As they neared Smiths Station, Alabama, they passed a gas station with a billboard toppled over. They then passed a police blockade diverting southbound traffic off the main roads. The skies darkened, the rain grew stronger — “all the ominous signs,” Miller said.
“The plan quickly pivoted from ‘We need to drive north’ to ‘We need to pull over and seek shelter immediately,'” he said.
Miller pulled into a gas station in Smiths Station and sheltered in a hallway in the back with about 10 other people, including children, and a dog. The power was out inside and the light outside continued to dim. It was “post-sunset dark,” Miller said. The wind whipped outside, in what appeared to be one of the tornadoes to hit the Lee County area.
“The energy was pretty tense,” he said.
After the worst weather abated, Miller said, he got into the car and drove north, past debris strewn around the roads. Within 15 minutes, he saw sunshine.
Alabama is a state familiar with storms
Nearly eight years after a tornado outbreak that devastated major cities and small towns alike, Alabama remains wary of severe weather and the menace of tornadoes.
After the 2011 outbreak, which spawned more than 60 tornadoes in Alabama and led to more than 230 fatalities in the state, some communities ordered upgrades to storm shelters, and residents became extraordinarily sensitive about even the threat of poor weather.
Sunday’s weather was a “fairly classic” pattern for March, where colder air mixes with warmer air, said James Spann, the chief meteorologist for WBMA television, the local ABC affiliate. Tornadoes are common this time of year in “Dixie Alley,” the nickname given to the Southern states vulnerable to severe weather, he said.
“This is clearly the biggest loss of life we’ve had in my state in a while,” he said. “In fact, we had more deaths in Lee County, Alabama, today than the entire United States last year.”
In 2018, 10 people were killed by tornadoes in the United States.
“It’s been very quiet,” Spann said. “We knew it’s been too quiet for too long.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.