Southern
Storms cause damage, Kill One
March 16, 2001
(AP) - Severe storms, including at
least one tornado, lashed the Florida Panhandle and
southwestern Georgia early Thursday, killing one person,
injuring more than a dozen others, and toppling trees
and mobile homes.
Officials said a tornado touched down
about 4 a.m. in Wausau, Fla., about 90 miles west of
Tallahassee. Hubert E. Worley, 59, died and his wife,
Marilyn, 41, was critically injured when their mobile
home was destroyed.
`Everything is leveled; there's
trailers with nothing but the frames, vans turned upside
down,'' said Shawn Sanders, the fire chief in nearby
Greenhead.
In southwestern Georgia, the
hardest-hit areas were around Whigham and Climax,
neighboring towns in Grady and Decatur counties, where
the storm hit about 6:30 a.m.
At least 12 structures, including
mobile homes and barns, were destroyed in the two
counties, said Lisa Ray, a spokeswoman for the Georgia
Emergency Management Agency.
A tornado was spotted on radar, but a
twister could not be confirmed in Georgia without a
closer examination of the damage, the National Weather
Service said.
High wind also toppled numerous trees
in Columbus, in west-central Georgia, damaging some
buildings in the city's historic district.
A couple in Whigham, Ga., Glenn and
Wynell Fewell, were sleeping when the storm lifted their
brick home off its foundation and slammed it back to
earth, causing the walls to collapse on them, Decatur
County Sheriff Wiley Griffin said. Mrs. Fewell, 76, was
in critical condition at Memorial Hospital in
Bainbridge, while her 79-year-old husband was in fair
condition.
At least five other people in Georgia
and 10 in Florida suffered lesser injuries. About 5,000
homes in Florida lost power but most of it was restored
by mid-afternoon.
One of the businesses wiped out in
Wausau raised snakes for pet stores. Its inventory,
including boas and pythons, was lost to the storm.
`The buildings are all gone, that's
our income. It's pretty much all gone,'' co-owner Lynn
Arnold said.
`We've lost carpet pythons, tree boas,
we've got mice and rats all over the place. Everything's
just everywhere.''
But the people who live next to the
business were worse off: They lost their home.
`The only consolation is they and
their four children walked out of there,'' Arnold said.
``Not everybody did.''
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