CHATSWORTH, Ga. — State officials are working on damage assessments to see what aid Murray County is eligible for to recover from the tornado on Sunday that killed seven people and sent more than 20 to area hospitals.

“(The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency) is completing state damage assessments and working through the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) individual assistance process to see if the state will qualify for federal disaster funds,” said Lisa Rodriguez-Presley, external affairs supervisor at GEMA.

“This process will take several weeks, but we are working to rapidly complete assessments so documentation can be submitted,” she said. “We are sheltering displaced families and working with them to find housing. We are providing debris removal teams through state agencies and will be doing debris removal in Murray County over the next several weeks. We are also mobilizing NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and volunteers to assist individuals with the recovery process.”

Murray County Emergency Management Agency Director and Fire Chief Dewayne Bain said Tuesday that a GEMA assessment had found “57 homes affected (by the tornado). By affected, they mean a shingle torn off or a gutter or something like that. There were 63 with minimum damage. There were 23 with major damage, and 35 totally destroyed.”

An EF-2 tornado with estimated peak winds of 135 mph tore a 7.8-mile long path nearly half a mile wide through northern Murray County on Sunday night, the National Weather Service reported. The tornado began 4.3 miles northwest of Chatsworth at 9:45 p.m. and ended 10 minutes later 3.6 miles south/southwest of Cisco.

The Enhanced Fujita Scale measures the intensity of tornadoes and runs from EF-0 to EF-5, with EF-5 the most severe.

Some local officials said Thursday that the number of injured and dead could have been greater if not for systems that allow residents of Whitfield and Murray counties to receive severe weather alerts by phone.

“If people got these alerts they would know to take shelter and do what they could to protect themselves,” said Whitfield County Emergency Management Agency Director Claude Craig.

Whitfield County uses the Code Red system. It sends alerts to landlines and to any cellphones registered with the system. To register a phone, go to www.dwswa.org/code-red-weather-warning.

Murray County uses the Hyper-Reach system. Sole Commissioner Greg Hogan said residents can download the app from their cellphone’s app store.

Craig said the alerts sent out by the National Weather Service are not countywide but based on a polygon where the the severe weather is headed. Some residents in Whitfield County have contacted the Daily Citizen-News to say they got storm warnings but no tornado warning. Craig said that was because they were in the polygon for a severe storm but not in a polygon for a tornado.