Thfire.com Everyday news that matters Severe wind storms killed at least 10 people in North Carolina and three in Virginia Saturday, upping the two-day U.S. storm death toll to 30, officials said.
The National Weather Service said tornadoes were sighted in 19 North Carolina counties and it had received unconfirmed reports of at least 10 deaths in all, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer reported.
“More than likely we had eight tornadoes in North Carolina,” Gail Hartsfield, an NWS meteorologist in Raleigh, said.
In Virginia, Mathews County Sheriff Steve Gentry said a tornado churned on the ground for 7 1/2 miles near Coke, leaving three people dead and more than 60 injured, the Newport News, Va., Daily Press reported.
The North Carolina and Virginia storm deaths came on the heels of 17 deaths in Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Mississippi, CNN reported.
The Observer and the Bladen Journal in North Carolina said the deaths included three people in a mobile home park in northeast Raleigh, three deaths in Bladen County, one in Sanford and another in Cumberland County.
“We got down in the bathroom, and we knelt down on the floor, and I was hollering and hollering,” said storm survivor Brenda McClamroch, who lives in southwest Wake, N.C., with her husband Tenny. “It all happened in a split-second, and it was awful.”
