Quick decisions meant life or death in Southern storms

Associated Press

As an apparent tornado bore down on them, seven people in a mobile home in southeast Alabama made a life-or-death decision: Three ran into one bathroom for shelter and four ran in the opposite direction to another room seeking safety.

The three, including Lawana Henrich, survived without a scratch, according to Coroner Robert Byrd. But a big hardwood tree that slammed into the mobile home killed the four others, including Henrich’s daughter and sister, Byrd said.

The tree toppled over during a wave of severe weather that brought heavy rain and strong winds to the Southeast, and it couldn’t have hit in a worse spot when it fell Monday night near Rehobeth, Ala.

“It was dead center,” Byrd said. “You think, ‘What’s the chance of four people being so close in one area?’ But they were.”

Those four and a fifth man who drowned in the Florida Panhandle died as a line of severe thunderstorms moved across the Southeastern United States from Texas.

Teams of surveyors headed out Tuesday to assess apparent tornado damage at three sites in southeastern Alabama and southwestern Georgia, said Mark Wool, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Fla.

Wool said authorities believe a tornado is responsible for damage that left the four people dead in Alabama, but he said the weather service won’t be able to say for sure until experts visit the site.

Byrd, coroner in Houston County, Ala., said Michelle Lewis, 53, died along with her niece, 27-year-old Amanda Blair. Lewis was Henrich’s sister and Blair was Henrich’s daughter, Byrd said; both victims lived in the trailer where they died, he said.

Byrd said the storm also killed two family friends, Terina Brookshire, 51, of Hartford, Ala., and Carla Lambart, 53, who was originally from Opp, Ala.

Byrd said Henrich, her husband and another man survived without injuries. Lawana Henrich saw a weather alert on television and heard the roar of a storm, and then told the others to seek shelter, he said.

“She said it was just a matter of seconds when that tree fell,” Byrd said.

In Florida, the Walton County Sheriff’s Office said the body of William Patrick Corley, 70, was found Monday afternoon following flooding near the Shoal River in Mossy Head. Authorities said Corley’s car was partially submerged and his body was floating face-down nearby.