A brutal spring storm raged across North Carolina on Saturday, flattening businesses, flipping cars and destroying homes, leaving at least four dead from a system already blamed for killing 17 people in four states.

The death toll was likely to rise. North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said there were fatalities in four counties but would not confirm an exact number, saying officials wanted to wait until Sunday morning.

Earlier, officials in Raleigh said more than one person died in the capital city in Wake County, one of the counties Perdue mentioned. Urban search and rescue teams were also looking for residents who might be trapped in damaged buildings.

Perdue said the 62 tornadoes were the most since March 1984, when a storm system spawned 22 twisters in the Carolinas, killing 57 people — 42 in North Carolina — and injuring hundreds.

This year's spring storm was easily the deadliest of the season, but there were stories of survival, too.

In South Carolina, a church with six people inside collapsed after it was hit by a tornado, but somehow no one was injured. And in Sanford, N.C., the manager of a Lowe's hardware store was credited with saving more than 100 workers and employees by ushering them to the back of the store, which acted as a makeshift shelter as the weather rolled in.

The storms began in Oklahoma on Thursday, then roared through Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.

Seven people each were killed in Arkansas and Alabama, which was hit a day earlier. A father, his son and his daughter were killed near Montgomery; a mother and her two teenage sons died in a mobile home in the southwest part of the state, and the storm claimed the life of an elderly man whose trailer was tossed nearly a quarter of a mile across a state highway.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley visited some of the devastated areas and declared the entire state a disaster.