Twister death toll at school raises questions

“It was controlled chaos,” said Dr. Tim Powell, an anesthesiologist.

Six more people were killed in the town of Newton, Ga., including a child, and several homes were destroyed, Fire Chief Andy Belinc said early Friday.

“It’s just a blessing, frankly, that we didn’t have more fatalities than we did,” Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said after viewing the damage Friday. He declared a state of emergency in six counties, clearing the way for state aid.

As the storm swept out to sea off South Carolina on Friday, the Coast Guard suspended a search for six boaters, saying a distress call during the storm late Thursday that their small craft was taking on water was likely a hoax. No debris or evidence of a boat was found.

In all, the National Weather Service received 31 reports of tornadoes Thursday from Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, plus a report Friday of a waterspout near Cartaret, N.C.

The normal peak tornado season is April and May, but weather service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said tornadoes can occur at any time.

Enterprise High School teacher Grannison Wagstaff described seeing the twister hit the school.

“I said ’Here it comes. Hit the deck,” he told CBS’s “The Early Show” Friday. “I turned around and I could actually see the tornado coming toward me.”

“It was in a split second that we sat down and started to cover ourselves before the storm hit,” added 17-year-old Kira Simpson, who lost four friends to the storm. “Glass was breaking. It was loud.”

“It’s like a bad dream. I have to keep reminding myself that it actually happened,” she said.

A section of roof and a wall near 17-year-old senior Erin Garcia collapsed on her classmates.

“I was just sitting there praying the whole time,” Erin said. “It sounded like a bunch of people trying to beat the wall down. People didn’t know where to go. They were trying to lead us out of the building.

“I kept seeing people with blood on their faces.”

Outside, debris from the school was strewn around the neighborhood, where cars were flipped or tossed atop each other. Searchers pulled the final body, a boy, from the high school’s wreckage around 1:30 a.m. Friday.

Mayor Kenneth Boswell said officials had yet to determine where the school’s students would attend classes for the rest of the year.

Georgia damage
In Sumter County, Ga., home of former President Jimmy Carter, Sumter Regional Hospital was in shambles Friday morning. Officials weren’t sure whether the people injured and the two reported dead in town were inside the hospital when the storm struck, Weiss said.

Between 40 and 60 homes were also damaged in nearby Clay County, on the Alabama line, Weiss said. Another tornado killed a man in a mobile home in Taylor County, north of Americus, county Emergency Management Agency Director Gary Lowe said.

Around Americus, the storm uprooted trees and knocked down power lines. Several homes and businesses were destroyed. At Cheek Memorial Church, the wooden steeple had toppled.

Marcia Wilson, who lives across the street from the Church, said she heard a huge roar as the storm went through.

“It felt like the whole house was fixing to fall in,” she said. “All I could do was pray that God take care of us and he did.”

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