In all, 15 people died on Sunday in Arkansas, two in Iowa and one in Oklahoma. And the storms were just getting started.
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Top: Ruth Bennett, Paula Blakemore, Mark Bradley, Jeffrey Hunter, Dennis Lavergne, Glenna Lavergne, Daniel Wassom, BOTTOM: Cameron Smith, Tyler Smith, John Servati, Rebekah Tittle, Rob Tittle, Tori Tittle
[h=4]Day 2: MondayOn Monday, the system churned east, but not far. Forecasters warned that the worst was not over, and they were painfully right.
The next round was a fusillade of tornadoes, more than 50 reported over 24 hours, that laid waste to parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee. In Kimberly, Ala., the fire department and the Church of God were demolished.
John Servati, a Dean’s List business major and a
swimmer for the University of Alabama, died in Tuscaloosa when a retaining wall in his basement collapsed on him. A friend said that Servati had held the wall up long enough for his girlfriend to escape.
In Fayetteville, Tenn., a married couple, John and Karen Prince, returned to their mobile home to check for damage. They mistakenly believed the danger was over, and were killed in another storm, neighbors said.
“We pulled up, and were in shock seeing our own home,” Tiffani Danner, a neighbor whose own home was destroyed, told The Associated Press. “Then we saw Karen’s father, and he said, ‘John and Karen are gone. They didn’t make it.’”
In Louisville, Miss.,
Ruth Bennett was holding the last child left at her day care center when a tornado struck and tore the building from its foundation. A firefighter later pulled the toddler from her lifeless arms.
“It makes you pay attention to life,” Kenneth Billingsley, a neighbor, told the AP.
The overall death toll climbed to 35.
[h=4]Day 3: TuesdayOn the third day, the storm dealt its fury in water, not wind. Florida and, once again, Alabama got smacked.
It rained so hard in Pensacola, Fla., that it broke the National Weather Service rain gauge — at least 11 inches, but nobody knows for sure. Five inches fell in a single hour, more than during all of Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
Trucks plunged 40 feet when
part of a highway broke clean off. One home rain gauge showed an astonishing 2 feet of rain in 26 hours.
“It went on and on and on. It was relentless,” Cheryl Clendenon, who was stranded for a time in her home in Pensacola Beach, told NBC News. “I used to like the sound of rain to help me get to sleep, but this was like Chinese water torture. It just did not stop.”
Elsewhere on the low-lying Panhandle, people clambered to their attics to escape rising water. Bill Pearson, a spokesman for Escambia County, said authorities there described it as the worst flooding in a generation.
Hundreds of people were stranded in cars and trucks on washed-out roads. At least one didn’t survive: A man in Florida drove into the water and then called for help, but the water was moving too quickly and it was too late.
Crews had to pluck people out of stranded cars and trucks in Alabama and North Carolina.
[h=4]Day 4: WednesdayMercifully, Wednesday was expected to be the last of it. The storm was headed toward the Atlantic coast.
The risk for tornadoes was highest in the Carolinas and Virginia.
But the day turned deadly before noon. Two people were reported killed in weather-related deaths in Georgia — a woman who crashed her car on a flooded road and another person hit by a tree branch.
They were the 37th and 38th people to die in the weeklong storm outbreak.
Meanwhile, rescues of the stranded continued in Florida. Brian Hatler, a fire battalion chief in Pensacola, told NBC News that the National Guard was expected to arrive by early afternoon.
The flooding was so serious that his department was using a military surplus truck known as a “deuce and a half” — a 2½-ton truck to plow through the high water and conduct rescues.
Elizabeth Chuck, Tracy Connor and Carlo Dellaverson of NBC News contributed to this report.
First published May 1st 2014, 2:40 am Erin McClam
Erin McClam is a senior writer for NBC News, responsible for reporting, writing and editing general news...
