A man salvages belongings near Beauregard, Alabama. Photos / AP
The first thing Scott Fillmer noticed was the overwhelming smell of pine trees. The trees littered his front yard just outside Beauregard, Alabama, after deadly tornadoes whipped through Lee County.
He opened his front door to find two power lines and a mattress lying in his driveway. His patio furniture was hanging from the surviving trees.
A car bumper had flown into his pasture, and jagged slabs of wood were strew on lawn.
Fillmer, 48, got in his tractor and grabbed a chain saw, and then he saw the rest of it: The levelled mobile homes. The dilapidated buildings missing their roofs.
"You didn't realise how bad it was until you got on the road," he said. "Now it looks like it's one of the worst tornadoes."
At least 23 people were killed, including children, in the deadliest US tornado outbreak in six years after twisters tore through Alabama, Georgia and Florida, Lee County Sheriff Jay Jones said.
The two tornadoes that touched down in Lee County yesterday wrought a trail of "catastrophic" damage, leaving an untold number of people without homes and in shelters and countless others mourning their loved ones.
Jones said he fears the death toll may continue to rise as recovery efforts continued today. Rescuers were set to deploy infrared drones, helicopters and K-9 units to search for signs of life amid a wide swath of debris, which made initial rescue efforts difficult, Jones said.
"It looks like someone took a giant knife and scraped the ground," Jones told reporters, describing a scene of obliterated homes mostly along two rural paths, Lee County Roads 38 and 39.
Most victims were concentrated in a 2.5 sq km area, though some debris was carried as far as a kilometre away from its point of origin, Jones said.
Residents had precious few minutes to brace for the storm. The first tornado warning was issued at 1.58 pm local time - five minutes before the initial damage reports in Lee County were received, National Weather Service meteorologist Gary Goggins said in Birmingham.
A second tornado struck 35 minutes later, he said.
On Twitter, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, said she extended a state of emergency declaration to the entire state. "Our hearts go out to those who lost their lives in the storms that hit Lee County today," Ivey tweeted. "Praying for their families & everyone whose homes or businesses were affected."
US President Donald Trump said he was working closely with Ivey to deliver emergency federal assistance.
"FEMA has been told directly by me to give the A Plus treatment to the Great State of Alabama and the wonderful people who have been so devastated by the Tornadoes," Trump tweeted.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, followed with his own emergency declaration for Grady, Harris and Talbot Counties.
The tornadoes were the deadliest in the United States since May 20, 2013, when a category EF-5 tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, killing 24 people and leaving more than 200 injured, according to data from the Weather Service's Storm Prediction Centre. Ten people died in tornadoes in the US throughout 2018. Tornadoes also broke out elsewhere in the Southeast yesterday, including in several counties in Georgia and one in Florida, but none were as severe as in Lee County.
Video: every single line tree snapped off just above the ground in the heart of one of the most intense parts of the #tornado path in Lee County, AL. This is Beauregard @breakingweather @accuweather pic.twitter.com/cifgWXez8t
— Reed Timmer (@ReedTimmerAccu) March 4, 2019
The number of people missing is in the "double digits," Jones said. Others had been transported to the hospital with "very serious injuries"; the East Alabama Medical Centre announced it had received more than 40 patients, with more coming.
"These people are tough, resilient people, and it's knocked them down," Jones said. "But they'll be back."
Leigh Krehling, a public information officer for Opelika, Alabama, the county seat, said that while the county had experienced tornadoes before, she didn't believe they'd ever seen anything like this.
"Our folks are suffering here in the county," she said.
Located about 160km southwest of Atlanta, Lee County, which includes the city of Auburn, has a population of more than 161,000 and covers roughly 1553 sq km.
According to the Weather Service, the first tornado to hit Lee County was at least an EF-3, meaning wind speeds were anywhere between 218 to 265 km/h and damage is considered to be "severe." The tornado was estimated to be at least a kilometre wide, the Weather Service said.
National Weather Service teams deployed to survey potential tracks in the region, which may confirm additional tornadoes touched down in the area, meteorologist Goggins said, following reports of damage in Autauga County and Barbour County.
Once his phone started shrieking with emergency warnings, Fillmer took cover in his laundry room with his wife and their three cats and a puppy.
Jacky Hornaday, who lives several kilometres from the unincorporated rural community of Beauregard, said she and her three kids hunkered down in the bathtub for nearly two hours, with stuffed animals and blankets to keep the children distracted. The sirens, she said, kept going and going.
Jones told reporters that one of the tornadoes appeared to travel for at least several kilometres on the ground and was at least a half a kilometre wide,
Scott Peake, a storm chaser, was right on its tail.
He watched it skip across Highway 51, a hulking grey rotating blob. All the yellow headlights whizzed past him, fleeing the storm, while Peake charged right toward it, about half a kilometre from its path, he said.
"I was close enough that I could hear the roar. It sounded like I was in a waterfall."
The 33-year-old storm chaser has tracked numerous twisters, but the damage he witnessed yesterday was extraordinary. One scene stood out to him: As he headed south down Highway 51 in his Ford Taurus, he drove past a mobile home park near Beauregard where first responders were just starting to swarm. Insulation was scattered all around. "Everything was flattened," he said. All but one home.
It was hard to imagine what had become of all the people who lived there, he said.
Jones, when describing the damage, said that in some cases, "just slabs [were] left where once stood a home."
The Lee County Flea Market reported on Facebook that its billboard sign flew across the state line, landing roughly 50km away in Hamilton, Georgia. In Cairo, Georgia, about three hours south of Hamilton, Mayor Booker Gainor said that more than two-dozen homes in the town of approximately 10,000 had been damaged.
Back in Beauregard, once it was safe to emerge, Trey Capps made his way over to his family's business, Capps Sausage, located not far from Fillmer's property, to survey the damage. Seeing the wreckage on the news, Capps feared the worst, and he found it when he arrived.
The building's roof was missing, he said. Nearby, a longtime family home that his great-grandfather built had been leveled. Pecan trees that Capps estimated were at least 100 years old were completely gone. The home, he said, was not salvageable, a loss that struck him as "unreal."
He could only muster one silver lining: "Thank goodness my folks were out of town at the time," he said, before remembering all those who weren't.
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