Storms Kill One in Georgia, Cause Damage Across South

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Violent storms killed three people in the South Tuesday, including one in Georgia, as another swarm of tornadoes and hailstorms tore across the region.

A woman died Tuesday evening in Pembroke, Georgia, where a suspected tornado ripped part of the roof from the Bryan County courthouse, destroyed the entrance to a local government building across the street and damaged homes in nearby neighborhoods, said Matthew Kent, a county government spokesman.

Kent said several others were injured in the county 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Savannah. He said the death occurred in one of the damaged neighborhoods, but had no further details. Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King said he, his staff and fraud investigators had deployed to the county to assist residents and educate people on the potential for unscrupulous repair people and other scams.

Region-wide, more than 50,000 homes and businesses were without power Tuesday night from eastern Texas to South Carolina. The outages came on a day when the National Weather Service issued a nonstop stream of tornado warnings for hours as the storm system tore across Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

In southeast Georgia, Gage Moore, 23, was driving home from work Tuesday evening on Interstate 16 in the county where Pembroke is located when his fiance called saying she heard tornado sirens. About two minutes later, Moore said, he looked up to see a towering twister looming to the left of the highway.

Moore said he pulled over and stopped his car behind an overpass, then took cellphone video of the funnel cloud churning across the interstate.

“Everybody started slamming on brakes all around me,” Moore said. “I could actually feel my truck shaking back and forth and hear the roar of it passing by.” He added: “Thankfully we all stopped and left a huge gap in the interstate where it crossed.”

In South Carolina, Allendale County Manager William Goodson said a tornado, captured in a video on social media, caused damage in his rural county, but exactly how much and whether there were any injuries were unknown.

“I know we have buildings damaged and power lines down,” Goodson said.

Debate also was delayed for nearly an hour in the South Carolina legislature after the state House chamber was evacuated for a tornado warning for Columbia. The legislation being debated would require athletes to compete with the gender listed on their birth certificates.

The weather service said it was sending survey teams to examine potential tornado damage in Wetumpka, Alabama. Lightning struck a flea market in the north Alabama community of Lacey’s Spring, causing a fire that gutted the building, news outlets reported.

Fallen trees and limbs closed a stretch of highway for hours in Newton County, Mississippi. As storms pushed into Georgia, a large tree fell and crashed through the roof of Marie Jordan’s home in metro Atlanta, coming down in the living room, kitchen and garage.

“It just took everything,” Jordan told WSB-TV. “For years and years, I have watched that tree.”

Springtime often brings strong storms to the Southeast. But the region has faced a barrage of weather recently that included a tornado last month in metro New Orleans, where one person died, and storms that killed at least two people in the Florida Panhandle last week.

The National Weather Service has reported that tornado frequency in the U.S. has remained relatively constant over the years. But some evidence suggests that storms have shifted somewhat from “Tornado Alley” in the Midwest to “Dixie Alley” in the Southeast.

Photo: The Bryan County Courthouse was damaged and trees broken in half, Tuesday, April 5, 2022, after a storm passed through the city of Pembroke, Ga., 30 miles from Savannah, Ga. (AP Photo/Lewis M. Levine)