No fewer than twelve persons have been reported dead after Tropical Storm Claudette swept across the Southeastern United States.
Gatekeepers News reports that ten people, including nine children, were killed on Saturday in a 15-vehicle crash about 35 miles (55 kilometres) south of Montgomery on Interstate 65, according to Butler County Coroner Wayne Garlock.
Garlock said the vehicles likely hydroplaned on wet roads, with eight children, ages 4 to 17, killed in a van belonging to a youth ranch operated by the Alabama Sheriffs Association for abused or neglected children.
He noted two people (29-year-old Cody Fox and 9-month-old Ariana Fox) from Marion County, Tennessee died in a separate vehicle while multiple people were also injured.
Similarly, a 24-year-old man and a 3-year-old boy were killed when a tree fell on their house on Saturday just outside the Tuscaloosa city limits, Captain Marty Sellers of the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit told The Tuscaloosa News.
The deaths occurred as drenching rains pelted much of northern Alabama and Georgia late Saturday. As much as 12 inches (30 centimetres) of rain was reported earlier from Claudette along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Gatekeepers News reports that the children that died in the van were returning to a youth ranch operated by the Alabama Sheriffs Association near Camp Hill, northeast of Montgomery, from a week at the beach in Gulf Shores, youth ranches CEO Michael Smith told The Associated Press news agency.
The van caught fire after the wreck. Candice Gulley, the director of the Tallapoosa County ranch, was rescued and was hospitalized in Montgomery, Smith said.
Smith noted that her condition wasn’t immediately available but added that at least one of the dead was Gulley’s child.
“This is the worst tragedy I’ve been a part of in my life,” said Smith, who was driving Sunday to Camp Hill to talk to the remaining residents, who had returned from Gulf Shores in a separate van and did not see the wreck.
“Words cannot explain what I saw,” Smith said of the accident site, which he visited Saturday. “We love these girls like they’re our own children.”