Louisiana police officer dies protecting daughter and 2,000 guardsmen activated as storm toll climbs

"In Choctaw County, Miss., a Louisiana police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body. The girl wasn’t hurt."

2,000 guardsmen activated as storm toll climbs
The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday Apr 28, 2011 7:50:10 EDT
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — About 2,000 Alabama National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state as dozens of tornadoes wiped out neighborhoods across a wide swath of the South, killing at least 201 people in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years. Officials said Thursday they expected the death toll to rise.

Alabama’s state emergency management agency said it had confirmed 131 deaths, while there were 32 in Mississippi, 16 in Tennessee, 13 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and one in Kentucky.

The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it received 137 tornado reports around the regions into Wednesday night.

“We were in the bathroom holding on to each other and holding on to dear life,” said Samantha Nail, who lives in a blue-collar subdivision in the Birmingham suburb of Pleasant Grove, where the storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children’s toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live. “If it wasn’t for our concrete walls, our home would be gone like the rest of them.”

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2,000 guardsmen activated as storm toll climbs