Raging storm kills 9 people in southern United States

 

Georgia/Florida/Tennessee:  At least nine people were killed by raging storms with heavy rain and ferocious winds that have struck across the southern United States, with Tennessee, Florida and Georgia the worst hit.

Several people  who died on roads made treacherous by downed trees and power lines.

The storms were part of a system that cut a wide swath from the Mississippi River across the Southeast to Georgia and the Carolinas on Monday and early Tuesday.

An enormous tree limb crashed through a Georgia family's bedroom killing a father and the young son he was holding in his arms.

Paramedics found the 4-year-old boy, Alix Bonhomme III, wrapped in the arms of his father, Alix Bonhomme Jr., in a sight so wrenching that even grizzled rescuers wept.

Miraculously, a younger son in the bedroom wasn't hurt, nor was Bonhomme's fiancee, Marcie Moorer, who was sleeping in another room.

Drivers dodged debris during the morning commute in Atlanta, where one person was killed when a tree fell on his car.

A portion of the roof was peeled back on the county administration building in Barrow County, Georgia.

The National Weather Service had confirmed at least eight of the nearly two-dozen possible tornadoes it was investigating in several states, though the damage in Jackson was blamed on 60 mph winds that weren't part of a twister.

The system that also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands had moved over the Atlantic Ocean by late morning.