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The deaths occurred when torrential rain fell in northern Alabama and Georgia late on Saturday. Up to 12 inches (30 cm) of rain was reported earlier from Claudette along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Brothers Candy Roberts, left, Anthony Roberts and Tikia Williams talk to each other Sunday, June 20, 2021, at their flood-ravaged home after heavy flooding on Saturday, in Northport, Ala. (AP Photo/Vasha Hunt)
Credit: Vasha Hunt
Credit: Vasha Hunt
Hours of flash floods were posted Sunday over northern Georgia, most of North Carolina, the North Carolina coast, parts of southeastern Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. A tropical storm warning was in effect in North Carolina from Little River Inlet to the town of Duck on the Outer Banks. Forecasters said a tropical storm watch was issued from South Sainte River, South Carolina, to Little River Inlet.
The eight children killed in the truck were returning to a youth farm operated by the Alabama Police Association near Camp Hill, northeast of Montgomery, after a week on the beach in Gulf Shores, Michael Smith, chief executive of Youth Farms, told The Associated Press. The truck caught fire after the wreck. Smith said Candice Jolly, a manager of Tallapoosa County farm, was rescued and taken to hospital in Montgomery. Her status was not immediately available. Smith said at least one of the dead was Jolie’s child.
Smith, who was driving on Sunday to Camp Hill to speak to the remaining residents, who had returned from Gulf Shores in a separate truck and had not seen a shipwreck, said.
“Words cannot explain what I saw,” Smith said of the crash site he visited on Saturday. “We love these girls as if they were our children.”
Garlock said the wreck site is “notorious” for the aquaplaning, where the northbound highway curves down a hill into a small creek. Traffic on this part of I-65 is usually packed with vacationers driving to and from the Gulf of Mexico beaches on summer weekends.
“Butler County has had one of the most horrific traffic accidents,” County Sheriff Danny Bond wrote on Facebook, adding, “I think it’s the worst ever in our county.”
The Tallapoosa County School System said counselors will be available Sunday at Reeltown High School, where some of the farm’s residents were students. Smith said the farm, which is based in Christianity, will likely hold a memorial service later, where he asks for prayer when he starts crying.
Gulley, the truck’s sole survivor, has worked with children for years, beginning when she and her husband were parents on the farm for seven years.
“During those years, 74 girls walked through our house and called us mum and dad,” she told Opelika-Auburn News in August 2019. She then became a relief mother who works as a fundraiser and community involvement, before becoming the farm manager.
High winds from Claudette remained near 30 mph (45 kph) on Sunday. The National Hurricane Center forecast that it will return to tropical storm status Monday over eastern North Carolina before heading out to sea in the Atlantic.
Claudette’s center of irregular rotation was located about 15 miles (20 kilometers) east and northeast of Atlanta on Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said the plane was moving from east to northeast at 17 mph (28 kph).
More than 20 people on a boat were rescued Saturday due to flooding in Northport, Alabama, WVUA-TV reported. The Tuscaloosa County Emergency Management Agency wrote on Twitter that local Red Cross volunteers were on hand to help those affected. A shelter has opened in Northport.
Claudette was declared well organized enough to qualify as a tropical storm early Saturday morning, after the storm’s circulation center came ashore southwest of New Orleans.
Shortly after making landfall, a suspected storm tornado destroyed or severely damaged at least 50 homes in a small town in Alabama, just north of the Florida border.
Escambia County Sheriff Heath Jackson said a mobile home garden was “largely flattened,” by fallen trees on homes and winds that tore the ceiling of a high school gymnasium. Most of the damage occurred in or near the towns of Broughton and East Broughton, about 48 miles (77 kilometers) north of Pensacola, Florida.
“It affected everyone,” Jackson said. “But with those mobile homes being built so close to each other, it can have a greater impact on them than it can do damage to homes spread out over one another.”
Tornadoes have also been reported in southwestern Georgia.
Damage from the storm was also felt in northern Florida, where winds – in some cases reaching 85 mph (137 km/h) – caused an 18-wheeler wagon to tip over on its side.
The storm also dumped heavy rain Saturday north of Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana and along the Mississippi coast, flooding streets and, in some areas, pushing water into homes. Later, the storm was engulfing the Florida Panhandle, as well as inland, a large area of Alabama.
Forecasters said the system could still dump 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters) of rain in the area, with isolated accumulations of 8 inches (20 centimeters) possible.
Separately, Tropical Storm Dolores made landfall on the west coast of Mexico with a force close to a hurricane. Until Sunday morning, it dissipated over Mexico. Its remains had maximum sustained winds of 25 mph (35 km/h), and its epicenter was about 170 miles (275 km) east of Mazatlan, Mexico.
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Forletti reported from Minneapolis. Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Ross Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Kelly Kennedy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.
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