Tornadoes Toll Up To 20 Dead In 3 States

A powerful storm system packing tornadoes has killed 20 people in Alabama, Missouri and Georgia, after authorities Friday morning raised the toll at an Alabama high school to eight students.

The storm, which swept through Georgia Thursday night, killed six people in Baker County near the town of Newton, Fire Chief Andy Belinc said early Friday.

As the storm swept out to sea off South Carolina on Friday, the Coast Guard searched for six people on a small boat who had sent a distress call overnight saying they were taking on water.

A tornado apparently touched down near the Sumter Regional Hospital in Americus, 117 miles south of Atlanta, killing at least two people at or near the hospital, injuring an undetermined number of others and damaging the building.

By early Friday, parts of the hospital were under water, an Atlanta television station reported. The front windows were blown out and the winds had picked up cars in the parking lot and tossed them around, hurling one into a tree.

Six more people were killed in the town of Newton, Ga., including a child, and several homes were destroyed, Fire Chief Andy Belinc said early Friday.

In Crawford County, "there's a bunch of mobile homes that are just piles of debris, metal. There were huge chunks of sheetrock up in tall pine trees, doors out in the middle of pastures — I had no idea which homes they came from," Candace Raymond of CBS affiliate WMAZ-TV reported.

"It's just a blessing, frankly, that we didn't have more fatalities than we did," Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said after viewing the damage Friday. He declared a state of emergency in six counties, clearing the way for state aid.

Authorities blamed a tornado for the death of a 7-year-old girl in Missouri Wednesday.

The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. In all, the National Weather Service received 31 reports of tornadoes Thursday from Missouri, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, plus a report Friday of a waterspout near Cartaret, N.C.

As the storm swept out to sea off South Carolina on Friday, the Coast Guard searched for six people on a small boat who had sent a distress call overnight saying they were taking on water.

Officials in Alabama were blaming the storms for at least 10 deaths in that state, including eight students at a school in Enterprise, about 75 miles south of Montgomery.

Officials had been watching the storm as it swept through southern Missouri and headed into Alabama. The students were preparing to leave for the day when the sirens started up and the lights went out. Everyone was evacuated into the halls for safety.

The fatalities were apparently in a hallway where the weight of the ceiling rained down on them, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. Another four dozen people were injured and rushed to the hospital.

"As I was walking toward the bathroom, I heard somebody just say 'oh, no!' Then the next thing I know, I hear the roof coming up. I hear everything flying around. And then I turned and heard somebody say, 'Here it comes! Hit the deck,'" substitute teacher Grannison Wagstaff said on CBS News' The Early Show. "I grabbed the student sitting next to me. We held each other and tried to keep each other calm. I turned back around and when I turned back around, I could actually see the tornado coming towards me."

Authorities were still searching the debris early Friday for more possible victims.

"It was like a war zone," Wagstaff told Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "All I heard was students crying, 'I'm trapped, get me out, get me out.'"

Gov. Bob Riley on Friday defended the school officials' actions after touring the area.

"I think they saved a lot of lives," Riley said. "I told the principal, 'You can do everything exactly right and have this happen.'"

At City Hall late Thursday, anxious parents waited for news of their children. One man passed out when he was told his son had died, collapsing to the floor as a dozen people surrounded him. He regained consciousness a short time after, screaming for his son.

A counselor on hand said the man was a soldier slated to return to Iraq in June. His 16-year-old son was an honors student who called his mother on his cell phone five minutes before the storm hit to say they were being moved.

Tears and sobs could be seen and heard from others throughout the government building.

"This is a small town. Everybody knows everybody ... Everybody is affected," said Wagstaff.

At least one other person was killed in Enterprise, a city of about 23,000 some 75 miles south of Montgomery. Another died across the state in rural Millers Ferry, where trailer homes were flipped and trees toppled, officials said.

The American Red Cross opened a shelter at a church in Enterprise, where about 75 people spent the night, said Jeffery Biggs, executive of the Covington County chapter.

"For the situation to be what it is, it's going good here," said Biggs. "This is the biggest thing we've had in this region for quite a while."

Barbour Alexander came to the shelter after a tree came through the kitchen of the home she shares with her husband and children. They couldn't return home because of a gas leak.

"It blew the whole porch out," Alexander said.

The tornadoes were the second to devastate a portion of the South this year. In early February, tornadoes ripped through a 30-mile path in central Florida, killing 21 and destroying hundreds of homes and businesses.

President Bush will view the damage in Georgia and Alabama Saturday, reports CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.