OHATCHEE – Ken Ingram sifted through the rubble of Ten Island Baptist Church this morning, constantly shaking his head in amazement.The clock on a rear wall was frozen at 11:06 a.m. That's when 60 parishioners, who were about to sing their first hymn of the morning Sunday, heard the roar.
``It sounded like a freight train coming,'' said Ingram, relating the words of his wife.
The parishioners scrambled down a pair of stairways into the basement seconds before a tornado rumbled across Alabama 77, wiping out a pine forest and shredding the church. According to Ingram, aside from a few cuts and bruises, no one was hurt.
``We're just thankful,'' he said. ``If they had been singing, they would have never heard it.''
The parishioners of Ten Island were fortunate. Deadly twisters and violent thunderstorms battered churches, hundreds of houses and a nursing home on Palm Sunday, claiming 23 lives in northeast Alabama, 16 in Georgia, two in North Carolina and one in Tennessee.
Worst hit was Piedmont, where the twister killed 21 people at Goshen United Methodist Church and hurt more than 80 others, many of whom were trapped in the rubble for as long as an hour.
Two others were killed in the nearby northeast Alabama towns of Ragland and Jacksonville. Damage and injuries were reported as far west as metropolitan Birmingham.
Chanrashekhar Savant, 49, of Madison died in his car on U.S. 431 in Jacksonville when the tornado struck. High wind blew Savant's van over, crushing him under its weight. His wife, daughter and son remained hospitalized this morning.
At Neely Henry Dam, rescue crews were dragging Betty Brown's partially submerged pickup truck from the water this morning. Ms. Brown died about 10:30 a.m. when the storm struck as she was trying to load her boat from the water after a morning of fishing.
``She didn't know what hit her,'' said Ragland Police Chief Harry Osborne.
The tornado had just come from Ragland, where it raced up Alabama 144, leaving 18 houses and 20 mobile homes destroyed. Also destroyed was the Ragland VFW Union Hall. The storm also damaged 26 more homes, a church and a business.
The tornado struck first on the western side of town, damaging a service station. It then leapfrogged downtown, touching down again a quarter-mile east of town on Alabama 144.
G.D. Kay, 68, was in his pasture when the twister came through, turning his two-story house into an unrecognizable pile of splintered wood and rain-soaked furniture.
``I don't know what I'm going to do, I've got very little insurance,'' he said as he picked through the debris this morning.
But Kay was fortunate. His wife, whom he initially feared was trapped inside, had gone to church. After a few anxious moments - ``I thought I was going to pass out,'' he said - she returned to what was left of her home.
Kay's neighbors, Curtis Bice, 91, and his sister, Ethel Campbell, 88, had been spending a quiet Sunday morning at home when the twister blew the house down around them. Rescue workers found Mrs. Campbell bleeding and Bice suffering from broken bones.
Family members said this morning that both were recovering in Baptist Montclair Medical Center in Birmingham.
The storm only caused havoc, but no deaths or serious injuries, at Peeks Hill Church, a small community 31 miles northwest of Anniston. About two dozen houses were destroyed.
Donna Donner was in bed reading a book Sunday morning when she first heard the wind roar. She raced into a hallway closet. Minutes later, Mrs. Donner was the only thing standing as her large frame house on Bonds Road had been reduced to a pile of splintered wood.
``It's amazing,'' said Max Partee, a friend of Mrs. Donner's, as he sifted through the rubble this morning.
Mrs. Donner's family owns about nine houses on Bonds Road, Partee said. All of them were severely damaged or destroyed.
Two miles away, on Peeks Hill Church Road, Billy C. Gann chatted with insurance adjusters who were surveying the damage to his home this morning. Gann, his wife and son were sitting on their front porch Sunday morning when they saw the tornado approaching from the northeast. They raced into their home and lay down on the kitchen floor as the storm took most of the roof off their house.
Around their neighborhood, two houses, a trailer and an old church were leveled.
Margaret Harrison, who lived near Gann, said it was the worst weather she had seen in her 65 years in Peeks Hill Church.``The worst thing we had before this was a bad hail storm back in 1946,'' she said.
From 75 to 100 homes were destroyed in Rock Run and Spring Garden communities in Cherokee County. Other communities in Alabama also suffered damage.
At Guntersville, the roof was blown off a nursing home, with 25 to 30 residents at the Marshall Manor Nursing Home taken to Guntersville Hospital for care, according to emergency management agency spokesman Scott Adcock. He said none of the residents were injured.
In DeKalb County, north of Cherokee County, 20 people were injured by a tornado that touched down in Grove Oak, Geraldine, Rainesville, Sylvania and Hammondville, Adcock said.
Storms also struck Shelby County, with several people injured when they sought shelter under a bridge at the I-65 and Alabama 119 interchange. County officials said two trailer parks, several homes and Pelham High School suffered damage from the violent winds.
At Birmingham, winds knocked high voltage transmission lines across Interstate 20-59, snarling traffic that had to be rerouted.
Ragland EMA and Red Cross workers set up a shelter at the Ragland nutrition center Sunday night, but EMA Director Gwen Looney said most of the victims stayed with family members. Family friends and emergency workers from across St. Clair County were in Ragland this morning, clearing roads and cleaning up.
State and local Emergency Management officials were still putting together damage assessments this morning. Gov. Jim Folsom was scheduled to tour the Goshen community this afternoon and will likely request a federal emergency declaration, which would allow residents and businesses to apply for a variety of government assistance.
For more, visit the Palm Sunday Special Section.Star Staff Writer Anthony Cook and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
