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| Carnage: Residents survey the destruction after a tornado hit Pratt City, Alabama, just north of downtown Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday |
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- Deaths in five states, most in Alabama
- Alabama university town of Tuscaloosa one of worst hit areas and amazing video shows tornado striking
- 1974 record of 148 tornadoes could be surpassed
- Louisiana police officer killed in Mississippi when a tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter
Fierce storms obliterated large swaths of land from Mississippi to Georgia, wiping out homes and businesses, causing a nuclear power plant to use back-up generators and even forcing the evacuation of a National Weather Service office.
The death toll was staggering - at least 178 people killed in five states, the worst-hit being Alabama, where an F5-category tornado ripped through Birmingham leaving a path of devastation in its wake.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city's police and other emergency services were devastated, the mayor said, and at least 15 people were killed and about 100 were in a single hospital.
A massive tornado, caught on video by a news camera on a tower, barrelled through the city late yesterday afternoon, levelling it.
By nightfall, the city was dark. Roads were impassable. Signs were blown down in front of restaurants, businesses were unrecognisable and sirens wailed off and on. Debris littered the streets and sidewalks.
Elsewhere, 11 people were killed in Mississippi, another 11 people were reported dead in Georgia and one person died each in Tennessee and Virginia.
The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out.
President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets. About 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state.
'Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster,' Obama said in a statement.
Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians.
'What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time,' Mayor Walter Maddox said.
Storms also struck Birmingham, felling numerous trees that impeded emergency responders and those trying to leave hard-hit areas. Surrounding Jefferson County reported 11 deaths; another hard-hit area was Walker County in the far northwest part of the state with at least eight deaths. The rest of the deaths were scattered around northern Alabama.
The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant about 30 miles west of Huntsville lost offsite power. The Tennessee Valley Authority-owned plant had to use seven diesel generators to power the plant's three units. The safety systems operated as needed and the emergency event was classified as the lowest of four levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of severe storms and had to take shelter in a reinforced steel room, turning over monitoring duties to a sister office in Jackson, Mississippi. Meteorologists saw multiple wall clouds, which sometimes spawn tornadoes, and decided to take cover, but the building wasn't damaged.
'We have to take shelter just like the rest of the people,' said meteorologist Chelly Amin, who wasn't at the office at the time but spoke with colleagues about the situation.
She said the extent of the damage statewide is still unknown.
'I really think with the rising of the sun, we'll see the full extent of this,' she said.
A Louisiana police officer was killed in Choctaw County, Mississippi, on Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body.
Lieutenant Wade Sharp, who had been with the Covington Police Department for 19 years, was described by his colleague Captain Jack West as ‘a hell of an investigator’.
In Mississippi, a man was crushed in his mobile home when a tree fell during the storm, a truck driver died after hitting a downed tree on a state highway and a member of a county road crew was killed when he was struck by a tree they were removing.
In eastern Tennessee, a woman was killed by falling trees in her trailer in Chattanooga. Just outside the city in Tiftonia, what appeared to be a tornado also struck at the base of the tourist peak Lookout Mountain.
Tops were snapped off trees and insulation and metal roof panels littered the ground. Police officers walked down the street, spray-painting symbols on houses they had checked for people who might be inside.
Mary Ann Bowman, 42, stood watching from her driveway as huge tractors moved downed trees in the street. She had rushed home from work to find windows shattered at her house, and her grandmother's house next door shredded.
The 91-year-old woman wasn't home at the time. 'When I pulled up I just started crying,' she said.
Melanie Cade, 31, of Choctaw County, Mississippi, patched holes in her roof after it was heavily damaged overnight and was in bed with her three children when the storm hit.
‘The room lit up, even though the power was out’, she said. ‘Stuff was blowing into the house, like leaves and bark. Rain was coming in sideways. I didn't care what happened to the house. I was just glad we got out of there.’
A tornado struck the northern Alabama community of Cullman on Wednesday, damaging a hospital, ripping the roof off the courthouse and pummeling a number of residences, authorities told CNN.
It comes as President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency in Alabama, authorising the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate relief efforts in the state.
The National Weather Service has already received more than 100 reports of tornadoes by last night.
A storm which brought severe weather to the South earlier this week has moved east at the same time a cold front moved across the Deep South - producing conditions conducive for tornadoes.
The worst tornado outbreak in the U.S. was in April 1974, when 148 hit 13 states over a 16-hour period. Some 330 people were killed in the storms and a total of 267 tornadoes hit the U.S. in the month
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