Tornadoes and severe storms swept through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi on Thursday, flipping homes and uprooting trees, according to authorities.
Alabama appeared to bear the brunt of the storm damage. According to Buster Barber, the county coroner, three women and three men died in Autauga County, northwest of Montgomery.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp expressed his condolences to the family of a 6-year-old girl who was killed when a tree fell on her car in Jackson.
At least four tornadoes struck the Southeast United States, according to Jason Holmes, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Birmingham, Ala. A rare long-track tornado churned for hours over Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, causing the majority of the damage. Tornadoes typically last five to ten minutes.
Mr. Barber said crews in Autauga County, Alabama, would spend Friday searching for bodies in the wreckage. He described mass destruction in the area, claiming that mobile homes were flipped, roofs were ripped off buildings, and a fire station and churches were destroyed.
“It picked up my double-wide house, moved it 200 feet, and flipped it over on the county road,” Mr. Barber explained.
On Thursday, Georgia and Alabama declared states of emergency. According to PowerOutage.us, more than 20,000 customers were still without power in each of the states on Friday morning.
“We are all too familiar with devastating weather,” Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said on Twitter Thursday night.
Images from the ground in Central Alabama showed fallen trees strewn around destroyed homes. The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency shared a photo of a tree that had fallen and crushed a patrol car, injuring a state trooper.
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency released a video showing buildings destroyed and debris covering a field in Monroe’s northeastern county.
Hundreds of students were trapped at middle schools in Griffin, Ga., about 35 miles south of Atlanta, Thursday night after trees blocked the roads. A video shot in a Walmart parking lot there showed cars being thrown around. Storyful, a social-media research company owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, verified the video.
According to the National Weather Service, Friday will be cloudy and breezy in the Southeast, with snow flurries possible in northern Alabama.