Bush to Americans: 'Help the folks down here'
POSTED: 10:14 a.m. EST, March 3, 2007
Story Highlights• Bush visits Enterprise, Alabama, where students killed
• Coffee County a federal disaster area, Bush says
• President to head to Georgia to visit battered areas
• Alabama, Georgia governors declare states of emergency
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AMERICUS, Georgia (CNN) -- President Bush arrived Saturday in storm-battered Enterprise, Alabama, where nine people -- including eight high-schoolers -- were killed when tornadoes ripped through the town of 20,000.
He told Gov. Bob Riley and Mayor Kenneth Boswell that Coffee County, the location of Enterprise, had been declared "a major disaster area." That designation means extra federal dollars for recovery.
He implored Americans to help out any way they can.
"Some people are going to need your help," he said. "I'd ask you out of the generosity of your heart to help the folks down here."
The Enterprise visit is Bush's first stop in a daylong tour of two Southeastern towns that were among the hardest-hit by Thursday's tornado-packing storms.
In all, the storms killed 20 people: 10 in Alabama, nine in Georgia and a 7-year-old girl in Missouri.
Bush attended a morning briefing at the Enterprise Municipal Airport before embarking on a tour of the town's storm damage and later meeting with families. (Watch a tornado scream into Enterprise, Alabama )
According to the White House, the president is then scheduled to travel to Americus, Georgia, where Thursday's storms claimed two lives and shut down Sumter Regional Hospital as doctors cared for the storm's victims.
The president is slated to return to the White House at 5 p.m.
Bush's visit to Enterprise comes on the heels of a tour by Riley, who declared a state of emergency for the area and ordered the National Guard to send troops, medics and roving security patrols to the southern portion of the state.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, too, has declared a state of emergency in six counties.
Although the White House has not announced Bush's exact itinerary, the president is expected to visit Enterprise High School, where eight 16- and 17-year-olds were killed while seeking shelter in the campus auditorium.
Thinking the Thursday tornado warnings constituted a standard drill, students were joking around in the auditorium as they waited out the storm. That is, until the school went black and glass from a skylight crashed to the ground. (Watch scenes of a school that's been "cut in half" )
"Everyone got really quiet -- we knew it was serious. No more than five seconds later, it was just like a big explosion and everything -- debris started hitting us," said Mitchell Mock, who was injured during the tornado.
Students were huddled in the building's interior, away from all windows, but no place was safe when the school took a direct hit from a tornado shortly after 1 p.m. The school's roof partially collapsed, trapping students in an avalanche of rubble.
"I had a wall fall on top of me, and the roof fell on top of us," student Brent Smith said. (Watch how one teen died saving a fellow student from a falling wall )
"There was just hundreds of kids coming down the hallway, and a lot of them were covered with blood," said Kim Lewis, Mitchell's mother.
Dylan Lewis was trapped under rubble after the twister passed. When he emerged, "there were no more people -- it was just cement and air-conditioning parts," he said.
His collarbone was broken, but Dylan and his brothers helped rescue others before going to the emergency room themselves.
Four juniors, two sophomores and two seniors were killed. The Enterprise School Board identified the dead as Michael J. Bowen, 16; Peter James Dunn II, 16; Andrew Joel Jackson, 16; Ryan Andrew Mohler, 17; Kathryn Madora Strunk, 16; Michael D. Tompkins, 17; Jamie Ann Vidensek, 17; and Alice Michelle Wilson, 16. (Audio Slide Show: Destruction at school)
Officials said the storms killed at least two others in Alabama, one of them in Enterprise and one in Wilcox County.
After delivering havoc to south Alabama, the storms moved into Georgia where nine people were killed -- six in Baker County, two in Americus and one in Taylor County -- spokesman Buzz Weiss of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency said.
In Americus, a tornado slammed into the Sumter Regional Hospital, shutting it down as health workers were treating victims coming in from the storm, Weiss said.
The patients, none of whom was killed, were transferred to other hospitals, Weiss said. (Full story)
The twister also destroyed the local headquarters of the Red Cross, its generators and three of its disaster trailers, an official said.
FEMA Director David Paulison said Friday that his agency was sending 14 teams to areas hit by the storms. Sheltering those who lost homes and taking care of families will be their primary mission, he said.
The FEMA teams will assess whether there is enough damage to warrant natural disaster declarations, Paulison said. (Where the storms hit)
President Bush said Friday that he will visit the storm-ravaged areas "with a heavy heart," according to The Associated Press. Bush said he would make the trip "knowing full well that I'll be seeing people whose lives were turned upside down by the tornadoes. I'll do my very best to comfort them."
