Alabama's official death toll from the April 27 tornadoes ticked up to 243 after DeKalb County added two less-conventional victims whose deaths qualified for government help with the funeral expenses.
The newly added victims are Eddie Joe Bobbitt, 71, and Carol Lisa Fox, 50, both of Rainsville, according to Bruce Wilson, the assistant coroner in DeKalb County.
Wilson said Bobbitt fell while trying to walk down his basement stairs after the storms knocked out his electricity. He died the next day, Wilson said.
Fox died May 11 at Trinity Medical Center in Birmingham, according to an obituary. She became ill after she lost electricity in the storms and for days had no refrigerated insulin to control her diabetes, Wilson said.
More conventional causes of death from the storms included being hit or smothered by debris. But DeKalb County added Bobbitt and Fox to its list of storm victims -- bringing the county's total to 35 -- after learning the Federal Emergency Management Agency considered the deaths storm-related and had approved funeral assistance to their families.
"If FEMA is recognizing it as a death," Wilson said, "we are."
FEMA can pay up to $8,800 to reimburse a family for funeral expenses, as long as the death is documented as having been caused by the storms. As of Wednesday, 341 individuals or families had requested funeral assistance in Alabama, and 158 requests totaling close to $1.1 million had been granted. In some cases, a single request may have covered more than one victim.
FEMA officials have offered several explanations for why the number of funeral requests exceeds the official number of deaths from the storms. They said some duplicate applications may have been filed by multiple family members, some online registrants may have mistakenly indicated a need for funeral assistance, and some deaths caused by the storms may not have been reflected in the official count. The latter was the case in DeKalb County.
Several coroners in other hard-hit counties said they are unaware of similar uncounted deaths in their jurisdictions. But several coroners already had some less conventional victims on their lists.
In St. Clair County, the 15 official deaths include a baby born prematurely to a mother who was thrown from her home during the storm and then went into labor, Coroner Dennis Russell said. The baby was delivered April 30 and died May 3.
In Jefferson County, the first casualty of the April 27 storms was Milton Edward Baker Sr., who was killed by a falling tree branch while helping neighbors after the morning tornado hit Cahaba Heights, said Pat Curry, the county's chief deputy coroner.
But not included are some who died in a house fire because their power was out and they were using candles, he said.
While Jefferson County went by information contained in death certificates, Curry said, "Everyone in the world has their own criteria."
Jackson County Coroner John David Jordan said that regardless of what the official count shows, the real death toll from the storms could continue to mount for years as people succumb to secondary complications from their injuries or perhaps even commit suicide because of the emotional pain they endured.
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