In the Bladen County community of Ammon, about 70 miles south of Raleigh, Audrey McKoy and her husband Milton saw a tornado bearing down on them over the tops of the pine trees that surround the seven or eight mobile homes that make up their neighborhood. Meanwhile, survivors recalled miraculous escapes. More than 240 tornadoes were reported from the storm system, including 62 in North Carolina, but the National Weather Service's final numbers could be lower because some tornadoes may have been reported more than once. The tornado didn't hit the two nuclear units, which are designed to withstand weather, earthquakes and hurricanes, the company said. Dominion Virginia Power said backup sources including diesel generators kept electricity going to maintain both units at its Surry Power Station. North Carolina's state emergency management agency said it had reports of 23 fatalities from Saturday's storms, but local officials confirmed only 21 deaths to The Associated Press.Īn apparent tornado passed near a Virginia nuclear power plant, knocking down power lines. Authorities said seven people died in Arkansas seven in Alabama six in Virginia and one in Mississippi. The violent weather began Thursday in Oklahoma, where two people died, before cutting across the Deep South on Friday and hitting North Carolina and Virginia on Saturday. "The good news is that the tornados have left and things are brighter today in North Carolina," Perdue said. Search-and-rescue teams were still operating all over the eastern part of the state, and federal officials were beginning their damage assessments, she said. Beverly Perdue said Monday morning on NBC's "Today" show that she'd never seen anything like the devastation, saying it appeared that homes had been handled like paper doll houses. Where roads were clear, there were massive piles of debris that had been pushed to the side of the street. Power lines and trees still covered nearby roads. Officials planned to assess conditions after sunrise before deciding whether to allow residents to return home. In Raleigh early Monday, authorities were blocking access to a mobile home park of about 200 homes where three children were killed. In all of Lee County, where Sanford is located, officials said there was just one confirmed fatality during the storm, which claimed at least 21 lives statewide, damaged hundreds of homes and left a swath of destruction unmatched by any spring storm since the mid-1980s. Those in the store did not become part of the death toll that totaled at least 44 across six states, and officials said quick action by Hollowell and his employees helped them all make it out alive in Sanford, about 40 miles south of Raleigh. People screaming in fear for their lives," Hollowell told The Associated Press on Sunday. The store was becoming part of the wreckage left by a ferocious storm system bristling with killer twisters that ripped through the South. More than 100 employees and customers screamed in near unison when the steel roof curled off overhead Saturday.
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