Residents of Perryton, Texas, were sifting through piles of splintered plywood and mangled mobile homes on Friday in search of any belongings they could salvage — an Iron Man action figure, a spatula wedged in wet dirt, clothes caught on barbed wire — after a deadly tornado destroyed much of its downtown.
The tornado was part of a ferocious series of storms that swept across the South on Thursday, killing five people, including three in Perryton, the authorities said.
The Perryton fire chief, Paul Dutcher, said the victims included an 11-year-old boy and two women in their 60s. About 100 others were injured in Perryton, a Texas Panhandle community where the tornado made a direct hit on a mobile home park, Chief Dutcher said. He added that there were no residents missing and earlier told CNN that about 200 homes and the local firehouse had been destroyed.
The storm system stretched as far as the Florida Panhandle on Thursday night, where one person was killed when at least one confirmed tornado struck Escambia County, knocking a tree onto a home, county officials said in a statement. And a man was killed in Madison County, Miss., when a tree fell on him on Friday morning, a fire official there said. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said that 69 homes statewide had been damaged in the severe weather.
Of the roughly 30 mobile homes hit in Perryton, about 115 miles northeast of Amarillo, most were severely damaged, with one S.U.V. lodged against the side of a home trailer and the others covered with mud, wire from toppled telephone poles and strewn clothes.
Some of the mobile homes were split in half. Residents there combed through clothing and other personal belongings that had been ensnared in barbed wire that surrounded the trailer park. Near one doorway stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, unscathed.
“I still cannot believe this happened to us,” said Leonor Marquez, 57, whose home in Perryton was damaged by the tornado. She had sought refuge in her bathroom as the powerful gusts of wind neared, and her teenage son threw himself on top of Ms. Marquez to protect her.
“We could be dead,” she said.
The Perryton Fire Department said on Facebook late Thursday that although the fire station “took a direct hit,” its trucks and ambulances were still operable.
About 50 to 75 patients were treated at Ochiltree General Hospital in Perryton, Kelly Judice, the hospital’s administrator, said by telephone. Their injuries ranged from cuts to traumas, she added, and 10 patients with life-threatening injuries were sent to larger facilities in Amarillo.
At a neighborhood in southwest Perryton, residents and crews were cleaning up debris on a sweltering and humid afternoon, clearing the remnants of what had been modest homes.
Priscilla Berumen, 37, of Perryton, said she was cooking dinner for her two children on Thursday when she heard a loud howling sound outside, as if a train were arriving. She opened the front door and saw what appeared to be a funneling cloud and debris drifting all across the neighborhood.
“I knew right then and there that was a tornado and we had seconds,” Ms. Berumen said. “I said, ‘Let’s get to the restroom.’”
After it passed, they walked outside and saw the damage seemingly wrought in seconds.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said he was deploying emergency response teams to assist residents in Perryton.
Across the South, nearly 500,000 customers were without power on Friday, according to the site poweroutage.us, which aggregates data from utilities across the United States. About 186,000 customers were without power in Texas, with most of the outages there centered in the northeastern corner of the state.
Millions of others in Texas were bracing for widespread heat that officials said would last for days and raise the risk of wildfires and heat-related illnesses.
There is a lower risk of tornadoes across the Southeast through the weekend, but the region will get heavy rain, the Weather Service said. Strong winds and hail could come to Oklahoma on Saturday, and on Sunday, Arkansas, Alabama and Mississippi could experience severe weather, including tornadoes.
Some daily temperature records may fall in Texas and Louisiana, including in Houston and New Orleans, the Weather Service said. Heat advisories were in effect on Friday for more than 30 million people, mostly in Texas. More than 15 million others across Texas and Louisiana were under excessive heat warnings. Some of the advisories and watches were scheduled to remain in effect through Saturday night.
Meteorologists describe heat waves using a heat index, which accounts for both temperature and humidity to measure how hot it feels outside. A heat advisory usually indicates that the maximum index temperature is expected to be 100 degrees or higher for at least two days. An excessive heat watch tends to mean that the index could rise to 105 degrees or more.
Heat index readings up to 115 degrees were expected in parts of Texas on Friday or Saturday, the Weather Service said in one advisory.
It’s not unusual for officials in Texas to issue heat advisories around this time of year, said Monte Oaks, a meteorologist at the Weather Service’s San Antonio office. They typically do so when high temperatures combine with other factors, including high humidity and westerly winds that blow hot air from high-altitude deserts, he added.
In this case, Mr. Oaks said, the humidity is high because Texas had a wetter and stormier spring than usual.
Climate change is making dangerously hot weather more common, and more extreme, on every continent. In Texas and neighboring Mexico, it is making excessive heat forecast over the next few days at least five times as likely, according to an analysis on Wednesday by Climate Central, a nonprofit research collaboration of scientists and journalists.
Johnny Diaz, Jesus Jiménez, Derrick Bryson Taylor and Remy Tumin contributed reporting.
Lucinda Holt, Eduardo Medina, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Mike Ives
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