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A giant storm system that ripped through the southern U.S. spawned tornadoes on Thursday that damaged walls, toppled roofs and felled trees in Selma, Ala., a city steeped in the history of the civil rights movement.
Brick buildings collapsed, cars were on their sides and traffic poles were in the middle of the city. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose in the city from the fire. It was not immediately known whether the storm caused the fire.
A “large and dangerous tornado” caused damage as it moved through the historic city, the National Weather Service said.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no casualties have been reported at this time, but first responders are continuing to assess the damage.
“People have been injured, but there have been no fatalities,” Perkins said. “We have a lot of power lines down. There are a lot of hazards on the roads.”
A few blocks past the city’s famous Edmund Pettus Bridge, an enduring symbol of the suffrage movement, buildings were crushed by the storm and trees stuck in the road.
Selma, a city of 18,000 people, is about 80 kilometers west of the Alabama capital of Montgomery.
The exterior of the two-story building was torn down by the storm, photos from The Selma Times-Journal show. Large pieces of insulation and metal were wrapped around tree trunks, and fallen tree branches covered a sign that read “WELCOME TO HISTORIC SELMA.”
Malesha McVay drove parallel to the tornado with her family. He said he was less than two kilometers from his home before he suddenly turned around.
He took a video of the giant twister, which would turn black as it swept home after home.
“It would hit the house and black smoke would swirl up,” McVay said. “It was very scary.”
A funnel cloud was seen north of Prattville, Ala., Thursday. The US National Weather Service described the tornado that tore through nearby Selma as ‘large and extremely dangerous.’
Selma was the flashpoint of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Alabama state troopers brutally attacked black suffragists as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. Among those beaten by law enforcement officers was John Lewis, who suffered a fractured skull. He went on to a long and distinguished career as a US congressman.
More than 50,000 customers are without power in Alabama, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide.
Nationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports Thursday from the National Weather Service through Thursday afternoon, with several tornado warnings still in effect in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. However, these reports have not been confirmed and some may be classified as wind damage after an assessment is carried out in the coming days.
The weather service has issued a tornado emergency for several counties north of Montgomery as the same storm system moves east.
“This is a life-threatening situation. Take shelter immediately,” the Weather Service said of the reported tornado.
Multiple tornado warnings were issued for Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee as the storm system moved through the area.
In Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said crews were checking damage in several other counties.
There were reports of downed trees, power outages and other widespread damage from the storm as it swept through the country.
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