Death Toll From Storms Rises to 7; Parts of East Coast Soaked

Robert Williams told his flock to bring lawn chairs to today’s service: He’ll be holding it in the parking lot.

A tornado ripped through the Community Baptist Church on Friday, smashing pews and scattering hymnals and Bibles across the field next door.

Williams, assistant pastor at the church, wasn’t complaining. “It’s really just a building, it can be replaced. People can’t,” he said.

The twister left one woman dead and at least 16 other people injured. Six more deaths were blamed on storms that tore through the South and Midwest on Friday and Saturday, including three in Kentucky and one each in South Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio.

The storm system drenched parts of the East Coast on Saturday as it moved out to sea.

In this Texas town 25 miles northeast of Houston, people who worked into the night cleaning up after the tornado were back at it early Saturday morning.

Under cloudy skies, they cleared away mounds of splintered glass, fractured tree limbs, tattered clothing and sodden furniture, and rummaged through the wreckage for anything that might have survived.

Some houses and mobile homes were ripped apart, others lost their roofs and still others stood untouched.

Up to 1,000 people were displaced by the storm, said Janis Parker, spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Service in Crosby, which has a population of about 1,800.

In rural Chester County in north-central South Carolina, a woman was killed and her son injured when a severe storm rolled through and tossed their trailer down the road early Saturday, State Police Lt. Don Lane said.

“There was what sounded like a bumblebee buzzing over our house, and the lightning was flashing,” neighbor Joyce Clack said.

The storm damaged about 10 mobile homes in the area, as well as barns, silos and cars, Lane said.