A VIOLENT storm system that ripped apart an Alabama high school as students hunkered inside later tore through Georgia, hitting a hospital and raising the death toll to at least 20 across the Midwest and south-eastern United States.
Eight students were killed when a tornado struck Enterprise High School on Thursday, blowing out the walls and collapsing part of the roof, Mayor Kenneth Boswell said yesterday.
"They were all in one wing of the school that took a direct hit," he said.
"Within a split second of sitting down and starting to cover ourselves the storm hit," said Kira Simpson, 17, who lost four friends to the storm.
As the massive storm system swept into Georgia on Friday, another tornado apparently touched down 190 kilometres south of Atlanta, killing at least two people and injuring an undetermined number of others.
At least 42 patients were evacuated to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia.
Six more people, including a child, were killed in the town of Newton, Georgia, where several homes were destroyed, fire chief Andy Belinc said.
The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota in the northern Midwest to the Gulf Coast.
Authorities blamed tornadoes for the deaths of a seven-year-old girl in Missouri, 10 people in Alabama and nine in Georgia, and twisters also damaged homes in Kansas.
President George Bush was making plans to visit today areas hit by the violent storm system.
In all, the National Weather Service received 31 reports of tornadoes last Thursday from Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, as well as a report on Friday of a waterspout near Cartaret, North Carolina.
AP
