Hard-hit areas of South in 'recovery mode' after deadly tornadoes
(CNN) -- Two days after one of the most active tornado outbreaks in U.S. history raked the Southeast, killing at least 45, the focus shifted Monday to cleanup.
"Everybody's been coming together," said Dave Western, pastor of the Kendale Acres Free Will Baptist Church in Sanford, North Carolina, which along with the adjacent parsonage escaped largely unscathed from the massive tornado Saturday that reduced several surrounding homes to sticks.
"That's the wonderful thing about this. We had people we didn't even know coming by wanting to help," said Western, whose church has served as a meal center for neighbors and a base for delivering food and water to other neighbors by golf cart.
Preliminary National Weather Service records indicate more than 90 tornadoes struck North Carolina on Saturday, more than four times the average 19 that hit the state in a typical year. It also exceeds the previous North Carolina record of 66 for an entire year, set in 1998, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
All told, the storm may have spawned 222 tornadoes Friday and Saturday, hitting 10 states -- Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, according to preliminary weather service reports that the agency warns are often revised downward after more complete information becomes available.
N.C. weatherman gets choked up 
Southeastern Virginia hit by tornadoes 
Students ride out storms in cafeteria Of the 45 deaths reported, 22 died in North Carolina, six in Virginia, seven in Arkansas, seven in Alabama, one in Mississippi and two in Oklahoma.
In North Carolina, the storms destroyed more than 130 homes and damaged more than 700, according to Gov. Bev Perdue's office.
Hardest hit was rural Bertie County, where 11 of the North Carolina's 22 deaths were reported. The storm destroyed 67 homes and severely damaged at least 15, said County Manager Zee Lamb.
"Starting today we go into recovery mode," Lamb said Monday on CNN's "American Morning."
In Ammon, North Carolina, 70 miles south of Raleigh, a tornado lifted Milton Powell's home off the ground and spun it around twice, he told CNN affiliate WWAY.
"It was just like a bad ride," he said. "Everything outside came inside and everything inside went out. I've got two dogs missing. I found one last night and have one missing that I think might be under the trailer."
In Onslow County, Marines pulled a 23-month-old boy alive from the rubble of a destroyed home after the child's mother stood up from the wreckage and said her child was buried, CNN affiliate WCTI reported.
"I started looking for stuff on the ground that was, you know, items for a baby and I started getting to where I could see a lot of baby stuff and I found the crib, and when I lifted the wall up, there was the baby right there," Sgt. Gregory Shafer was quoted as saying.
At Shaw University, where President Irma McClaurin decided to call off the rest of the semester because of damage to the campus, student Julius Stukes Jr. grabbed a video camera and gave a tour of the campus ravaged by a tornado on Saturday.
"All of the offices are done. Oh my God, this used to be an office -- it's not anymore," he says during the video provided to CNN affiliate WNCN. "Our campus is done. The whole campus is done."
Students at the private Baptist college, who have not yet taken final exams, will be graded on work done so far, McClaurin said in a statement. Graduation will continue as planned, McClaurin said.
In Sanford, employees at the Lowe's home improvement store are being credited with saving more than 100 lives by shepherding customers into a safe haven towards the rear of the store as tornadic winds literally nipped at their heels.
"The winds came roaring in within about 10 seconds," said Gary Hendricks, who drove to the store from their nearby home thinking they would be safe there from the impending storm. "It roared right through the hallway we were in."
Images of the store show the roof peeled back over the front of the store, revealing rows of display shelves inside.
Assistant manager Bobby Gibson said it was like "ordered chaos" as employees and customers scurried under cover as debris flew and metal screeched around them.
"It was just people helping people," Gibson said of the effort to get people to shelter. "It was customers, it was employees, it was everybody working together."
The deaths in North Carolina are the first from tornadoes since 2008, when two people died. You have to go back to 1884 in North Carolina weather history to find anything like this weekend's storm. In that year, 23 people died in a tornado that hit Anson and Richmond counties, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
The weekend's outbreak appears to be the deadliest and most active single outbreak recorded in the United States since February 2008, when a 131-tornado outbreak struck the Southeast and Ohio Valley on Super Tuesday primary voting day, killing 57 people and causing more than $1 billion in damages, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
In one weekend in April 1974, an outbreak of 148 tornadoes killed 330 people, according to National Weather Service records.
While weather service records indicate this has already been the busiest April for tornadoes since at least 1950, with 376 tornadoes reported across the country, more severe weather appears to be on the way.
A weather system building towards the Midwest is expected to present a moderate risk of tornadoes, high winds and hail in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky on Tuesday. None of the areas heavily affected by last week's storms are threatened by those forecast for Tuesday, CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras said.
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