Tornadoes slam South Carolina

Photos by Sean Rayford for Getty Images

Thomas Glover was looking for his sister-in-law’s pocket book when we met yesterday morning in Livingston, SC. A single tear rested on his cheek as we talked about the tornado that annihilated her home along Rt. 321, about 30 miles south of Columbia. The occupants of the home had been transported to the hospital and The National Weather Service would eventually label the tornado as an EF-3.

Another 60 miles south on Rt. 321 into Hampton County, almost to the Georgia border, damage appeared to be more widespread, with at least five fatalities reported in the county.

There, I talked with Jimmy Smith, who sheltered in his bathroom with his wife Sherry and their dog, moments before the tornado ripped their home apart. “When it was all said and done and the house fell, he was under me and my wife was on the floor. We were in the bathroom and the wall fell on the tub and the commode and that held it up enough that we could crawl out,” he said, as chainsaws buzzed away in the background.

“We crawled out from under that rubble right there. We stopped when my wife fell in the swimming pool. All the rest of the house is in the pool and we couldn't tell where we were.”

Nine fatalities were attributed to nine possible tornadoes that swept across the state of South Carolina on Monday morning. The wave of storms brought death and destruction across a large swath of the southern United States.

To license or see more photos you can visit my report on the Getty Images website.