Lee's remnants cause twisters, flooding in South (AP)

By HOLBROOK MOHR and DORIE TURNER, Associated Press Holbrook Mohr And Dorie Turner, Associated Press – 28 mins ago

ATLANTA – The destructive remnants of Tropical Storm Lee slithered farther north Tuesday morning after spawning tornadoes, flooding numerous roads, sweeping several people away and knocking out power to thousands. Record amounts of rain have fallen in parts of Tennessee, and more was expected.

Flash flood watches and warnings were in effect early Tuesday from the Appalachians northeastward into New England, according to the Hydrometeorological Prediction Center.

More than 9 inches of rain fell Monday in Chattanooga, and forecasters expected rain clouds to loom over the area through the next day. The rainfall beat an all-time mark for rain in 24 hours. Numerous roads were flooded, and even modest winds were pulling trees out of the soggy ground.

"We have had problems with trees coming down, mainly because the soil is so saturated with water," said National Weather Service forecaster David Gaffin in Morristown, Tenn.

To the south, forecasters expected rainfall to taper off in Alabama overnight after flooding numerous Birmingham roads. The weather also caused a roof to collapse at Pinson Valley High School outside Birmingham, according to The Birmingham News. No one was injured.

As many as 200,000 lost power across Alabama as the storm moved through, with most of the outages in the Birmingham area, Alabama Power spokeswoman Keisa Sharpe said. By early Tuesday, the number of outages was down to 187,000, she said. Power outages were also reported in Georgia and Tennessee.

The storm system churned up treacherous waters across the South. In Mississippi, a man drowned while trying to cross a swollen creek, while authorities called off the search for a missing swimmer presumed dead off Alabama. Another man was missing after trying to cross a creek in suburban Atlanta.

Chainsaws and blue tarps were coming out in Georgia neighborhoods hit by suspected twisters that ripped off siding and shingles and sent trees crashing through roofs. The Georgia Emergency Management Agency said about 100 homes were damaged there in Cherokee County, about 30 miles north of Atlanta.

To the southeast in Norcross, a man was swept away when he tried to cross a swollen creek between apartment complexes, Gwinnett County Fire Battalion Chief Dan Rowland said. The search was called off at nightfall, and body recovery operations were going to start Tuesday morning. A companion to the missing man was caught in the creek but managed to make it out of the water.

Mickey Swims and his wife hid in the basement of their house in Woodstock, Ga., as an apparent tornado passed.

"I heard it and saw the trees go around and around," Swims said. "I knew when I heard it that if it touched down, it was going to be bad."

Swims owns the Dixie Speedway, where he estimated the storm caused $500,000 worth of damage. That includes about 2,000 feet of chain-link fence uprooted from its concrete base, walls blown out of a bathroom and concession stands and tractor-trailer trucks turned into mangled messes.

Areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that bore the brunt of Lee over the weekend were also digging out. Lee's center came ashore Sunday in Louisiana, dumping up to a foot of rain in parts of New Orleans and other areas. Despite some street flooding, officials said New Orleans' 24-pump flood control system was doing its job.

Heavy rain fell in Mississippi on Monday, and a swollen creek near an apartment complex in Jackson prompted officials to move 45 families into a storm shelter. In Louisiana's Livingston Parish, about 200 families were evacuated because of flooding.

The man who died in Mississippi, 57-year-old John Howard Anderson Jr., had been in a car with two other people trying to cross a rain-swollen creek Sunday night. Tishomingo County Coroner Mack Wilemon said Anderson was outside of the car and couldn't hold onto a rope thrown by a would-be rescuer.

Jonathan Weeks, a 48-year-old salesman from Plantersville who owns a vacation home nearby, said he helped pull two people to shore and tried to save Anderson.

Weeks said he and his wife saw a van crossing the creek, and he happened to have a rope in the tool box of his truck.

"It all happened so fast. They were in there trying to get out and panicking. The power was out so everything was dark," Weeks recalled in a phone interview Monday.

"We threw them a rope and tied it to a tree," Weeks said. "We got two of them to the bank and were trying to help the driver. We had him on the rope and were trying to pull him in, but I don't think he was able to hold on."

Residents in Lee's wake are worrying about the effects of soggy ground. Part of a levee holding back a lake in Mississippi's Rankin County gave way, endangering some homes and a sod farm. Rankin County Road Manager George Bobo said officials could order evacuations of the few homes if the situation gets worse. The indention left by the levee slide didn't go all the way through to the water, though.

Sharon Spears, a 54-year-old special education teacher, stood in her front yard Monday looking up at the red dirt exposed from the levee slide.

"I'm concerned," Spears said. "I won't sleep any tonight."

Sandy Shamburger said a full breach would ruin his sod farm.

"It would be devastating. It would probably be the end of Rankin Sod," he said.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., surf churned up by the storm proved treacherous. The Coast Guard suspended its search for a swimmer who went missing Sunday. Local authorities were transitioning to efforts to find his body, said Maj. Anthony Lowery of the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office.

Elsewhere, the heavy rain made for a dud of a Labor Day holiday as Gulf Coast beaches mostly cleared of tourists. On Monday morning, the main road on Alabama's Dauphin Island was flooded and covered with sand, jellyfish and foam washed in by Lee. Customers trickled in to the town's largest store on what should have been a busy day.

"It's been kind of boring," said Tabitha Miller, a clerk at Ship and Shore. "It's not killing us though since we're the only gig in town."

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Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Dauphin Island, Ala., and Randall Dickerson in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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Towns hit by twisters offer rebuilding road map (AP)

By JIM SUHR and JIM SALTER, Associated Press Jim Suhr And Jim Salter, Associated Press – Thu May 26, 10:45 pm ET

JOPLIN, Mo. – Less than a week after one of the nation's deadliest tornadoes wiped a big chunk of Joplin off the map, the city is beginning to shift its focus toward the next challenge: rising from the ruins. And the town that gained fame as a stop along Route 66 can use the road maps drawn by other storm-savaged communities that have endured the same long journey.

Not far from Joplin, tiny Pierce City and Stockton rebuilt piece by piece after tornadoes reduced much of their prized downtowns to rubble, killing four. Greensburg, Kan., did the same, starting over after a 2007 twister leveled the town and killed 11.

The rebirths took years of hard work, partnerships and plain old stubborn faith. Some of the projects are still unfolding. Yet they offer a hopeful testament about beginning anew after a disaster, even if the other towns didn't face the scale of death and decimation rendered by Sunday's tornado that killed at least 126 people and by some estimates injured more than 900.

Joplin's half-mile-wide twister took out the city's main hospital, the high school and possibly thousands of homes. The Walmart was flattened, along with the Home Depot. Hundreds of businesses and industrial buildings were lost. And an untold number of vehicles — from cars to tractor-trailers, even the hospital helicopter — were mangled.

City Manager Mark Rohr said planners are already plotting a comeback, vowing Joplin "will recover stronger than when we began."

Federal aid will help.

President Barack Obama has declared disasters in Jasper and Newton counties, and a key House panel has approved a $1 billion aid package to make sure federal disaster-relief accounts don't run out before the end of the budget year in September.

Rep. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican, said the move would ensure there's enough money for victims of the Joplin tornado, as well as those suffering from flooding along the Mississippi River and last month's twisters that swept across Alabama.

A day after Joplin was crippled, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told reporters any federal aid to disaster areas may need to be offset by spending cuts. But Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, vowed to make sure Joplin gets all it needs.

Funding questions aside, former Joplin Mayor Ron Richard, now a state senator, was a bit more cautious than Rohr in his vision for the immediate future.

"I wouldn't consider this an economic-development opportunity. This is just survival," Richard said. "We're just going to have to get back to where we were — as close as we can would be the goal. I'm not sure how much time it's going to take."

Julie Johnson felt that way about Pierce City on May 4, 2003, when tornadoes marched into Jasper County on the Missouri-Kansas line and cut a swath east across the state. When the fury had passed, 18 people were dead and some 70,000 structures were damaged or destroyed over 76 counties.

The twister killed a man when the National Guard Armory where many were seeking shelter partly collapsed.

Pierce City, a town of 1,260 people some 35 miles southeast of Joplin, lost more than 80 homes and all but three of its businesses. A nine-block area of its historic downtown was wiped out. The district was once replete with antique shops and eateries housed in buildings that dated to the 1800s.

The city hall, fire station, library and senior center? Gone, along with the grocery store, two convenience shops, the pharmacy and the hardware store.

"We had a lot of historic stuff, two full blocks of historic, beautiful buildings. Only three managed to make it through," said Johnson, the city clerk.

But Pierce City pressed on. A new $4.7 million armory opened on the city's south side, replacing the old building, which now houses a mental-health center. The city got a new firehouse, a City Hall that's a $450,000 replica of an old train depot, and things local leaders never dreamed of having — a Dollar General store, two strip malls and storm shelters at the fire station and at the schools.

"Some things came back bigger and better," said Johnson, who has spent all but four of her 48 years in Pierce City, where the population is down just 128 from a decade ago. "It's never going to be the way it was as far as physical attributes, and we lost the historical charm as far as downtown. But we're back."

So is Stockton, eight years after the lakeside town was brought to its knees by the tornado that killed three people, nearly destroyed the town square and knocked out one-third of its 120 businesses. Hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed, and the park was obliterated.

Residents wanted to start rebuilding immediately, Mayor Patty Thompson recalls. But the city council barred new construction for a few months, allowing for cool reflection about how the resurrected town should look.

Now, Thompson said, Stockton has a "whole new downtown," its buildings fashioned of dark brick. The community center, about the only thing salvaged from the tornado, has been rehabbed. Trees have been replanted. Residents appear to like it. The population of 1,819 is down just 141 from 2000.

"I'm really proud of how this community pulled together and went forward," said Thompson, 65, a waitress at a Mexican restaurant. "A lot of people could have just moved away and said forget it. But we've just got a beautiful little city."

Scars remain: Some sidewalks buckled by the tornado still need replacing. Replanted trees in the park can only grow so fast, and saplings are being planted in the once-devastated cemetery.

Still, she said, "In eight years, you can say, `Look at how far we've come. We can overcome.'"

Both cities had big-time help. The federal government extended a rare offer to assist with long-term recovery, offering a package that included developing a plan for rebuilding, as well as appointing a project manager to seek out private and government assistance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency eventually doled out millions of dollars in grants to both communities.

In southern Kansas, Greensburg was a town of about 1,500 with a declining population before a tornado roared through in May 2007, destroying 90 percent of the town in winds topping 200 mph.

At the time, Steve Hewitt was a 33-year-old, first-time city manager on the job for only a year. He said the town approached rebuilding as an opportunity and, like Stockton, took some time to think about it.

Greensburg brought in planning consultants from a big city, held community meetings, reworked some zoning ordinances and literally shuffled the town. The school was rebuilt at a different site. City Hall was rebuilt on land that once was a car dealership, which relocated to a higher-traffic spot. And Greensburg rose up as a model green community — more environmentally friendly than it ever had been, including a $50 million school with geothermal systems that rely on the Earth's heat for warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer.

Even so, the recovery is far from total. According to the 2010 census, Greenburg's population of nearly 800 is barely half of what it was a decade ago, as is the number of businesses. Yet to be rebuilt are the town's pharmacy, variety store and movie theater.

"We're seeing a gradual growth, but it comes down to jobs and employment. Economic development is highly important and critical to our situation," said Mayor Bob Dixson, a 57-year-old retired postal worker. "The tax base was gone. The businesses were gone. Schools were gone."

Hewitt, who left Greensburg a few months ago to become the city manager of Clinton, Okla., knows Joplin can follow a similar path to get back on its feet.

"The next weeks and months (in Joplin) will be very dark and grim," Hewitt said. "But in that tragedy, there will be some unique bright spots, because you start to see the future develop. You'll see a sense of community unlike they've probably ever witnessed."

Stockton's Thompson agrees.

"It'd be easy to just give up," she said. "But a lot of people who have lost loved ones still have a lot of loved ones left. The community can pull together and rise from the rubble. They can do it. We did."

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Suhr reported from St. Louis. Associated Press Writer David Lieb in Jefferson City contributed to this report.

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Ala. tried to close home where twisters killed 7 (AP)

ASHVILLE, Ala. – The government sued last fall to close an assisted living facility where nine elderly, disabled people lived in two double-wide mobile homes parked in a valley miles from the nearest town. Yet the facility was still open April 27, when a tornado smacked the mobile homes and killed four residents along with the owner, his daughter-in-law and 7-year-old granddaughter.

The state filed suit because Shoal Creek Valley Assisted Living didn't have a license — the fact that it was illegally operating in mobile homes wasn't even mentioned in the complaint. But months passed, winter turned to spring, and the place remained open. Then came the day tornadoes killed more than 200 people across Alabama.

One of those tornadoes, an EF-4 with winds as strong as 180 mph, wiped out the homes in a direct hit, leaving only twisted metal, splintered wood and seven bodies scattered across a horse pasture. That nondescript plot of land about 45 miles northeast of Birmingham was the site of the South's largest cluster of deaths on that epic day of misery.

While other cities and counties suffered more total fatalities in the twisters last month, state emergency management officials across the Southeast said they know of no other single location where more people died in the April outbreak. However, the destruction was so total in some places that it's impossible to determine exactly where some people died, and other victims remain hospitalized.

No one will ever know if the seven people who died in the assisted living center would have survived in a more substantial structure, but 71 patients escaped without injury when another tornado struck the brick-and-masonry La Rocca Nursing Home in Tuscaloosa about 90 minutes before Shoal Creek Valley's trailers were demolished.

This week in Missouri, a larger and more powerful tornado killed 10 residents and one worker when it reduced a Joplin nursing home to a pile of rubble. However, about 80 other residents survived, as did more than 100 at a nearby facility that was also heavily damaged.

Friends and family of the Alabama facility's owner, 56-year-old Ronnie Isbell, described him as loving and concerned, a man who dedicated much of his life to caring for the aged and infirm.

"What was going on? Helping the elderly age with grace and dignity!" Kelly Ward, a relative who has served as a spokeswoman for the family, said in a message exchange through Facebook.

An attorney who represented Isbell, Charlie Robinson, conceded the business lacked the required state license and was operating illegally, but he denied that anyone died simply because it was located in mobile homes. Nearby brick homes were reduced to rubble, too, he said.

"If it was anything short of the situation room at the White House it would have been destroyed," Robinson said. He called Isbell one of the best people he's ever known.

Jim Callahan saw a different side of Isbell and his business. Callahan claims his mother was physically abused at Shoal Creek before she moved to another assisted living home last year.

"I don't see how (Isbell) could have loved those people," Callahan said. Even after Isbell's death, Callahan plans to go ahead with a lawsuit filed last year over the treatment of his mother.

Isbell first opened an assisted living facility with his now ex-wife in the 1970s in nearby Ragland, and about 20 years later he moved the center to Shoal Creek Valley, in St. Clair County. Not far from Neely Henry Lake, the narrow valley is sprinkled with a mix of farms, large brick-and-wood houses and mobile homes.

Court records show two nurses from the Alabama Department of Public Health knocked on the door at the assisted living center on June 3 to investigate a complaint. They said they found nine elderly residents, eight of whom had Alzheimer's disease and weren't able to walk, requiring skilled nursing care. They also found Isbell, who told the nurses he was the owner but didn't have a license.

Apparently unknown to the state — which was acting on a hospital's tip about a patient who developed bad bed sores at Shoal Creek Valley — Callahan's mother already had sued four months earlier claiming she had been mistreated at Isbell's home. Laverne Callahan, who was 83 when she died in February, had deep bed sores and a black eye when her son removed her from the mobile homes, he said.

Jim Callahan said the assisted living home cost his mother $1,500 a month, which ate up all her government checks plus additional money from him and his brother. He didn't like the idea of her living in a mobile home full of elderly, bedridden people in the tornado-prone Southeast, but he said he had little choice.

"It was something I had to accept because I couldn't afford anything else," he said. "I didn't like the situation."

With the Callahan lawsuit moving forward in state court, the State Board of Public Health sued to shut down Isbell's business in October. Robinson, Isbell's lawyer, was the son of the circuit judge assigned to the case, Charles E. Robinson.

Isbell asked a court to throw out the lawsuit, which he claimed was baseless for unspecified reasons, but the court didn't immediately rule. But with his son representing the defendant, Judge Robinson stepped aside from the case Jan. 31, more than three months after the state sued.

A new judge was appointed, but there wasn't another hearing set until May 12 — two weeks after the tornadoes killed Isbell; his daughter-in-law Tammy Isbell, who worked at the assisted living center; and her 7-year-old daughter, Leah. Today, three white crosses bearing their names stand on the property; a stuffed toy bear and a white bow hang on the locked gate.

Only four residents remained at the center by the time the tornado struck. Killed along with the Isbells were Sandra Pledger, 68; Mae Lovell, 97; Bertha Kage, 91; and Oberia Layton Ashley, 86.

Brick houses were leveled along with mobile homes in Shoal Creek Valley, and St. Clair County Coroner Dennis Russell said the destruction was staggering.

"Thirteen people died on that one road," he said.

Isbell's lawyer said no one was forced to remain at Isbell's home, and their relatives knew the center was located in mobile homes. Despite Callahan's claims, Ronnie Isbell generally provided top-quality care, according to Robinson.

"It was the choice of the residents or the choice of their families to be there," he said.

Citing Isbell's death, the second judge dismissed the state's lawsuit against Shoal Creek Valley Assisted Living. Callahan's lawyer, Beverly Owen Barber, said she is moving ahead with the lawsuit against Isbell's estate over the treatment of Laverne Callahan, however.

"We're not going to allow it to be dismissed," Barber said.

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