32 Killed as Tornadoes Rake South : Disaster: Twister hits Alabama church packed with Palm Sunday worshipers. Georgia braces for more damage as string of storms heads for area.

A series of powerful thunderstorms tore across the South on Sunday, killing 32 people, including 16 who died when a tornado caved in the roof of a church crowded with Palm Sunday worshipers.

The twister hit Goshen Methodist Church in Piedmont, Ala., about 11:30 a.m. CST, breaking windows and toppling a brick wall on a pew of children waiting to sing in a pageant. About 90 people were injured, officials said.

“One man ran down the aisle yelling: ‘Get on the floor!’ ” worshiper Elwanna Acker, 63, told the Associated Press. “Then the roof came down. The woman right next to me died.”

The storm system was blamed for deaths elsewhere in Alabama and Georgia and for causing widespread damage in several other states.

At least 11 north Georgia counties were hit hard by afternoon thunderstorms and tornadoes that reportedly killed at least 14 people, knocked out power for thousands of homes and businesses and closed roads. Dozens of people were reported injured.

Much of eastern Alabama and all of northwest Georgia was braced Sunday night for more bad weather as another line of tornado-flinging thunderstorms roared into the area.

“This is the worst kind of tornado damage that we’ve had in north Georgia since the early ‘70s,” said Gov. Zell Miller.

“There are a lot of (power) lines down, a lot of trees down. Highway 75 is blocked, and probably won’t be open until (Monday) morning because of the trees.”

Miller said the state Department of Transportation and Department of Corrections workers were immediately dispatched to help clear the roads.

He said the death toll could go higher. “There are a number of people missing,” he said.

In Cherokee County, one of the Georgia counties hit hard by the storm, tornadoes cut large swaths through the countryside. Large fields of trees were snapped like toothpicks and the ground was littered with live power lines.

“I think we’re going to need the National Guard, and we need all the volunteers with chain saws we can find,” County Commissioner Bobby Hawthorne said.

A flash flood warning was in effect in metropolitan Atlanta, and there were unconfirmed reports of tornado sightings just north of the city.

In Piedmont, children dressed in their Easter clothes were performing in a Palm Sunday drama when the tornado hit. Six children, from 2 to 12 years old, were among the dead.

“I just started to scream, ‘Everybody get down!’ ” Carol Scroggins, who was leading the pageant, told the AP. “People were screaming, but it happened so quickly there wasn’t much time for reaction.”

About six miles away, the Union Grove Methodist church also was hit by a tornado during Palm Sunday services, but its 75 worshipers took shelter in the basement and escaped injury, Piedmont Mayor Vera Stewart said.

Sixteen bodies were found inside the Goshen church, and one man was found outside in a van, apparently killed by part of a toppled telephone pole, officials said.

There were unconfirmed reports Sunday night that three of the injured had died in local hospitals.

About 140 people were in the church, five miles north of Piedmont in eastern Alabama, officials said. Rescuers had feared that others were buried, but all were accounted for after more than 100 searchers dug through the rubble by hand and called in a crane to lift the collapsed roof.

The tornado ripped away an entire side of the red-brick building and blew the steeple into the parking lot. Pieces of pews were scattered around the area.

Several nearby houses also were demolished by the twister, and the National Guard was called in to help search for victims.

Christa Rhinehart, 16, who had sung earlier in the service, told the AP that she was sitting near the front when the roof came down on her pew. “I started screaming for my momma,” she said, “and she was right beside me.”

The storm knocked out power and telephone service, hampering rescue efforts. Passing motorists helped take the injured to hospitals around Piedmont, a rural town of 5,000 residents 72 miles west of Atlanta.

The injured were so numerous that five regional hospitals and medical centers had to be put on alert to handle the load.

The National Weather Service had issued a tornado watch for the area earlier in the morning. The weather service issued a warning saying a twister had been spotted on the ground about the time the roof collapsed.

A temporary morgue was set up at a National Guard armory in Piedmont, and the civic center was turned into a shelter for the families of victims.

A tornado also damaged the Ten Island Baptist Church in Ragland, Ala., and injured an undetermined number of people, Calhoun County sheriff’s dispatcher Leon Hill said.

Elsewhere in Alabama, tornadoes killed one person at a park and another in his car.

In Guntersville, Ala., the roof was blown off a nursing home. The 25 to 30 residents were not injured and were taken to a hospital.

A tornado that touched down in DeKalb County injured 20 people, authorities said.

The tornadoes were part of an intense springtime storm system that began with moist, unstable air off the Gulf of Mexico early Sunday. The air was pushed northeast by the jet stream and clashed with low pressure along a cold front.

In northern Georgia, dozens of injuries were reported. A trailer park was destroyed in Pickens County, near the Tennessee line. Seven of the 14 dead in Georgia were in Pickens County.

Two other trailer parks in nearby counties were also hit, authorities said.

Shelters were being set up for displaced residents. Don Stephens, a spokesman for the American Red Cross, estimated that 200 homes were heavily damaged in northern Georgia.

A tornado touched down in Charlotte, N.C., with heavy damage reported at a housing complex and elsewhere in the city.

Power outages and structural damage was scattered in northern South Carolina, where at least two tornadoes touched down. Two homes were destroyed and at least two people injured in Long Creek, S.C., when a tornado hit the ground. The injured suffered cuts and bruises.

Golfball-sized hail pelted parts of Alabama and Mississippi, and heavy winds caused damage in North Carolina and Mississippi.

The Associated Press and Reuters News Service contributed to this story.