A tornado barreled through a northern suburb of Birmingham, Ala., late on Monday night, killing a teenager who had been sheltering in a basement with his family members when a tree fell on the house, the authorities said.
The storm, which struck the city of Fultondale just before 11 p.m. local time, was part of a band of severe weather systems that extended across much of the Southeast, local meteorologists reported. It collapsed buildings, severely damaging a high school and a hotel, and trapped people in their homes.
Bill Yates, the chief deputy coroner for Jefferson County, said Elliott Hernandez, 14, died Monday night in the basement of a single-family residence that collapsed during the tornado. His family members were rescued, Mr. Yates said in a statement.
Jay Knight, a Jefferson County commissioner, said at a news conference on Tuesday that a tree fell on the house where the teenager and his family were taking shelter.
The fire chief, Justin McKenzie, said up to 30 people had been injured, and 18 of them were taken to a hospital. He said at a news conference that rescuers conducted a second round of searches of homes in the daylight, and had found six people, including some who had been reported missing by their families.
Speaking about the large number of tornadoes that take place in central Alabama, the fire chief said: “Sadly, here in Fultondale we are very experienced in these kind of things. We knew exactly what to do, how to do it and when to do it. We just don’t like to do it.”
Nearly 4,000 tornadoes have struck Alabama and the surrounding region since 1989. The chief said in a telephone interview that humid air from the Gulf of Mexico colliding with cooler air from Canada and the Midwest give the central region the “high probability” of tornadoes.
He said Monday’s storm started out as low risk and within “a matter of minutes” transformed into a tornado warning.
“This area of central Alabama gets hit on a regular basis almost every year,” he said in the interview. “We are responding two to three times per season,” he added, during the spring and fall.
A Hampton Inn off Interstate 65 in Fultondale was mangled by the tornado, which tore off part of the roof, photographs shared online showed.
“We do still have people trapped in houses,” Larry Holcomb, the city’s mayor, said by telephone early Tuesday.
Mr. Holcomb said that he had been at home when the tornado hit and that streets in his neighborhood were blocked by fallen trees.
Workers from Alabama Power Company were trying to restore electricity to residences that had none.
Mr. Knight said that most of the damage was in the city of Fultondale, but that the tornado skipped a few times, striking some parts of Center Point, which lies to the west.
Michael Holloway, a resident of Fultondale, sat in his truck outside his house on Tuesday and waited for friends to bring chain saws to clear the fallen trees blocking his path.
The windows of his house were blown out, and a backyard shed was gone, he told WBRC, a local TV station. His garage, he said, was “completely leveled.”
High winds and heavy rain continued to move through the area affected by the tornado, hampering search-and-rescue efforts, according to local news reports.
The northbound lanes of Interstate 65, the north-south highway that bisects the state, were closed after the tornado hit Fultondale because of a major crash, the Alabama Department of Transportation said. It was not immediately clear if the crash had been caused by the tornado or its aftermath.
The National Weather Service in Birmingham said it would inspect the damage to determine the strength of the tornado.
by Neil Vigdor and Christine Hauser (2021, Jan 26 | Updated 2021, Jan 27) The New York Times
