Severe weather swept across the southern US on Sunday and Monday, killing at least 30 people and damaging hundreds of homes from Louisiana into the Appalachian mountains.
The storms piled fresh misery atop the coronavirus pandemic, leaving more than a million homes and businesses without power amid floods and mudslides.
In Alabama, people seeking shelter from tornadoes huddled in community shelters, protective masks covering their faces to guard against coronavirus.
Many in several states spent part of the night sheltering in basements, closets and bathtubs as sirens warned of possible tornadoes.
Striking on Easter Sunday across a landscape largely emptied by coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the storm front forced some uncomfortable decisions. In Alabama, where the governor, Kay Ivey, suspended social distancing rules because of the weather threat, people wearing protective masks huddled in storm shelters.
Eleven people were killed in Mississippi, nine died in South Carolina and eight died in north-west Georgia.
Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, said two people were killed in Chattanooga, and others died under falling trees or inside collapsed buildings in Arkansas and North Carolina.
The storms caused flooding and mudslides in mountainous areas and knocked out electricity for about 750,000 customers in a 10-state swath ranging from Texas to Georgia and West Virginia, according to poweroutages.us.
In central Georgia a suspected twister lifted a house, mostly intact, and deposited it in the middle of a road. In Louisiana, winds ripped apart a metal airplane hangar.
In Moss, Mississippi, a twister shredded the house, meat-processing business and vehicles of Andrew Phillips, but his family was unscathed after he huddled with his wife and two sons inside a cinder-block “safe room”.
They crowded inside with pillows hours after watching an online Easter service because the pandemic forced their church to halt regular worship. The room was the only thing on their property left standing.
“I’m just going to let the insurance handle it and trust in the good Lord,” said Phillips.
Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, said the storms were “as bad or worse than anything we’ve seen in a decade”.
“We are used to tornadoes in Mississippi,” he said. “No one is used to this.”
The National Weather Service (NWS) tallied hundreds of reports of trees down across the region, including many that punctured roofs and downed power lines. Meteorologists warned the mid-Atlantic states to prepare for potential tornadoes, wind and hail. The storms knocked down trees across Pennsylvania.
In Georgia, the Murray county fire chief, Dewayne Bain, told WAGA-TV two mobile home parks were severely damaged, with five people killed and five hospitalized after storms left a five-mile path of destruction. Another person was killed when a tree fell on a home in Cartersville, the station reported.
Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, said some storm victims already were out of work because of shutdowns caused by Covid-19. “Now they have lost literally everything they own,” he said.
Several apparent tornadoes spun up in South Carolina, where dozens of homes appeared damaged in a line from Seneca to Clemson. Emergency officials were working to open shelters in the North Carolina mountains, where up to 5in of rain fell in a few hours.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, at least 150 homes and commercial buildings were damaged and more than a dozen people treated, but none of their injuries appeared life-threatening, the Chattanooga fire chief, Phil Hyman, said.
“It’s widespread damage that happened extremely fast,” he said. “I advise people to stay in their homes at this point. As far as safety is concerned, we still have active power lines that are down.”
The deaths in Mississippi included a married couple, Lawrence county sheriff’s deputy Robert Ainsworth and Walthall county justice court deputy clerk Paula Reid Ainsworth, authorities said.
“Robert left this world a hero, as he shielded Mrs Paula during the tornado,” said a Facebook message by the sheriff’s office.
Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, declared a state of emergency on Sunday night after he said several tornadoes had struck the state.
“This is not how anyone wants to celebrate Easter,” Reeves said on Twitter. “As we reflect on the death and resurrection on this Easter Sunday, we have faith that we will all rise together.”