georgia. could you set the scene for us there? reporter: yeah, tragically, jim, the fatality of the 5-year-old child was in an adjacent county, butte s county, spaulding county where i m located here and unfortunately this is part of the 35 tornados that ripped through the southeast that is likely, the same tornado that cycled up and down causing the damage you see behind me. so what you re looking at is actually the roof of a large shopping complex. when we surveyed the scene last night, the hobby lobby had a large gas leak and you could smell and hear the gas as it was being released. the firefighters have since cut that off. now, we ve had 35 tornados just in the past 24 hours. but there have been 100 tornado reports so far this year. that is four times as many as average tornados to date. we ve had nearly half of the days this year in 2013
tornados across the country in 11 different states occurring in places like california and illinois. in georgia we ve had three days of tornados so far this year. that is nearly a quarter of the days of 2023. so we re four times the average number of tornados so far in 2023 to date. that is just incredible. here in spaulding county, kate, we heard about four middle schools that had to shelter in place during the height of the tornado as it moved through. the damage was so bad leading up to the schools that they actually had to keep the children in the school up until about midnight last night when authorities deemed that it was safe for them to take the buses home to return them to their residence. so with the fatality in butts county to my east, a child losing their life, yet another story to report from in the south of above average tornado season, very, very difficult
reporting on the ground for us. ryan mentions georgia. in georgia, one death has so far been confirmed. a 5-year-old was killed after a tree fell on top of a car. dare van damme is in griffin, georgia, with a look at the damage there. derek, what are you seeing? reporter: tragically, the one fatality in state of georgia was in an adjacent county to where i am now, in spaulding county. it was likely part of the same tornado that cycled up and down causing the destruction you see behind me. what you re actually looking at is the top roof of a large shopping center. you could see a hobby lobby in my back here, there was a gas leak that has since been contained. but when we arrived on the scene last night, you could smell the gas, and you could hear the gas escaping as well. as ryan said, it is been such an active year for tornados. just with this later round, there were 35 tornados. but to date we ve had nearly 100
us. ryan, look at that. reporter: it is just devastating behind us. and i couldel tell you, in the close county, they have found more bodies but haven t been able to update us. they re doing surveys across the state. but we want to show you how powerful this storm was. i m six feet tall. look at this metal wraps all over this tree like it is an ornament. this is what we re seeing, signs of destruction all over this city. we are on broad street, which is the main street here in downtown selma. and as you look this direction, you could just see how the storm plowed through this area. we re going to walk this way to show that you building in the background. as we were looking around and even doing our own assessment, there are houses that they still haven t been able to reach because there are trees down throughout the area. power companies have been trying to restore some of the power and phone service is very spotty