Among the wreckage along the wet Interstate 65, about 55 kilometers south of Montgomery, eight children who died on Saturday were sitting in a van heading to a home for abused or neglected children. Butler County Coroner Wayne Garlock said multiple cars may be water skiing.

The accident also killed two people in another vehicle-a 29-year-old Tennessee man and his 9-month-old daughter. Others were injured.

Elsewhere, a tree fell on a house on the outskirts of Tuscaloosa on Saturday, killing a 24-year-old man and a three-year-old boy, and a 23-year-old Fort Payne woman after the car drove out of the road. death. The authorities said a swollen creek.

The news media reported that search and rescue dogs found the body of a man who was believed to have fallen into the water during a flash flood in Birmingham.

As of Monday morning, Claudette’s maximum sustained wind speed was 65 km/h. According to the National Hurricane Center, the storm is located about 145 kilometers south of Ocean City, Maryland, moving northeast at a speed of 45 kilometers per hour.

Before Claudette goes to sea, Carolina is expected to receive about 3 to 5 centimeters of rain.

Children killed in beach trips

The truck in the crash on Saturday contained children between 4 and 17 years of age. They were taken care of at the Tallapsa County Girls Ranch, a youth home run by the Alabama Sheriff’s Association, which accommodates abused and Neglected children, including foster children.

After spending a week on the Gulf Coast beach, the van is driving back to the ranch near Camp Hill, northeast of Montgomery. The ranch director Candice Gurley was the only survivor of the van-rescued from the flames by a bystander.

“Words cannot explain what I saw,” said Michael Smith, CEO of Youth Ranch, of the accident site he visited on Saturday. He returned from the Gulf Coast in a separate van and did not see what happened at the time of the accident.

An area notorious for water skiing

Gurley was still hospitalized in Montgomery on Sunday in a serious but stable condition. The two deceased in the van were her children, aged 4 and 16 years old. The other four are ranch residents and two are guests, Smith said.

The annual beach trip is the highlight of the ranch. A worker said that this is a new experience for many girls. The employee wrote on social media before the trip that the organization hopes “our girls can enjoy all the things that ordinary families can do on vacation”, and later posted a photo of a girl standing on the beach. Looking at the sky over the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

On Monday, volunteers transported food at the ranch on a two-lane county highway lined with white painted wooden fences. The sheriff’s car and orange traffic barrel blocked the road to the area where the girl lived with her parents.

On Sunday, students and community members gathered at Reeltown High School, where the girl attended a prayer ceremony. According to a local news website al.com, one of the surviving girls was sitting in another car and cried when talking about her “little sister”.

“When people hear about the ranch, they usually think that these girls did something wrong or bad in order to get there. But this is not the case,” said the teenager, who was not identified because she was detained by the state.

“These girls have gone through so much. They are such strong, beautiful and kind family members. It is my honor and honor to be their big sisters,” she said.

The coroner said the location of the shipwreck was “notorious” for water skiing because the northbound highway curves down the hill to a creek. Traffic on this I-65 interstate is usually crowded with vacationers who drive to and from Gulf beaches on summer weekends.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter that it will send 10 investigators to the area on Sunday.