RALEIGH, N.C. — A brutal spring storm raged across North Carolina on Saturday, flattening businesses, flipping cars and destroying homes, leaving at least eight people dead from a system already blamed for killing 17 people in four states.
North Carolina officials said there were multiple fatalities, and they were working to confirm the exact number. At least three people were confirmed dead in a mobile home park in Raleigh, and at least five people in other parts of the state. Urban search-and-rescue teams were in two counties looking for residents who might be trapped in damaged buildings.
In South Carolina, a church with six people inside collapsed after it was hit by a tornado, but somehow no one was injured.
The storms began in Oklahoma on Thursday, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
Seven people each were killed in Arkansas and Alabama.
A father, his son and his daughter were killed near Montgomery; a mother and her two teenage sons died in a mobile home in the southwest part of the state, and the storm claimed the life of an elderly man whose trailer was tossed nearly a quarter of a mile across a state highway.
Gov. Robert Bentley visited some of the devastated areas and declared the entire state a disaster.
Things looked similar in North Carolina. Roofs were ripped off stores, trees were plucked out of the ground and “scores” of homes were damaged, said emergency management director Doug Hoell.
Police in Raleigh evacuated residents at a mobile park, and emergency crews went door-to-door looking for people injured or trapped by the storm that flipped mobile homes from one side of the street to the other. At least three people died there.
Guillermo Villela, 34, said he saw two young children at the park trapped under fallen trees.
“I see a lot of disaster. It’s bad,” Villela said.
In the town of Sanford in central North Carolina, what could have been a deadly catastrophe was averted when a Lowe’s manager saw the approaching storm. The manager ushered more than 100 workers and employees to the back of the store, which acted as a makeshift shelter. The front of Lowe’s was flattened by the storm, with cars in the parking lot tossed around and flipped on their roofs.
“It was really just a bad scene,” said Jeff Blocker, Lowe’s regional vice president for eastern North Carolina. “You’re just amazed that no one was injured.”
Cindy Hall, a Red Cross volunteer and outreach minister at First Baptist Church in Sanford, said dozens of homes in the area were damaged.
“It wiped out our St. Andrews neighborhood, which includes about 30 homes,” she said.
There were 62 separate reports of tornadoes in the state, said North Carolina public safety spokeswoman Julia Jarema.
To the west, hikers were rescued after being briefly stranded by flash floods brought on by the heavy rains.
Hundreds of thousands of people were without power in the Carolinas and storm shelters were opening in various communities.
