36 Killed as Tornadoes Rake South : Disaster: Twister hits Alabama church packed with Palm Sunday worshipers. Region braces for more damage as string of new storms approaches.

ATLANTA —  A series of powerful thunderstorms tore across the South on Palm Sunday, killing at least 36 people, including 18 who died because a tornado knocked down the roof of a crowded church.

The tornado hit the Goshen Methodist Church near Piedmont, Ala., about 11:30 a.m., toppling a brick wall onto a pew of children waiting to sing in a Palm Sunday 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, which weather service spokesmen said spawned an unusually high number of tornadoes, was blamed for deaths elsewhere in Alabama and Georgia and for causing heavy damage from Mississippi to the Carolinas.

At least 13 north Georgia counties were hit hard by afternoon thunderstorms and tornadoes that reportedly killed at least 15 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-spawning thunderstorms roared into the area. A large portion of Georgia remained under a tornado watch until 2 a.m., but by midnight it appeared that metropolitan Atlanta had escaped the brunt of both storm systems.

“This is the worst kind of tornado damage that we’ve had in north Georgia since the early ‘70s,” said Gov. Zell Miller, who planned to fly over the state Monday morning to assess the damage, estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars.

He said the death toll could go higher. “There are a number of people missing,” he said. Through Georgia and Alabama, dangerous conditions impeded search parties.

The state Department of Transportation and Department of Corrections workers were immediately dispatched to help clear the roads, Miller said, but officials said at least two major roads in north Georgia were expected to remain blocked until Monday morning.

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.

Similar scenes of devastation were found throughout the region: overturned cars, felled trees, buildings and homes demolished.

At the Alabama church that was destroyed, 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 was also hit by a tornado during 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 a toppled telephone pole, officials said. Two other victims died later Sunday from injuries.

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

Christa Rhianehart, 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 15 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 contributed to this story.