Kentucky ? Debris and damaged items from homes and businesses where hauled curbside Monday as residents in the Midwest and South cleaned up after the weekend’s severe thunderstorms that were blamed for 13 deaths.

At least eight deaths were reported in Kentucky after flooding triggered by 5 to 10 inches of rain in 36 hours sent rivers and creeks over their banks. Eighteen counties and 12 cities declared states of emergency, state officials said.

The storms that hit parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee on Friday and Saturday stranded people in cars, forced others from their homes and left thousands without power.

The death toll in Kentucky included two University of Kentucky students swept up by knee-deep water as they tried to cross a flooded Lexington roadway.

In Illinois, authorities said lightning was the apparent cause of a house fire that killed elderly two women. Three deaths were reported in Arkansas, where six counties declared states of emergency.

In northern Arkansas on Monday, officials found the body of a retired firefighter two days after he was swept away when the Spring River overflowed its banks at a campground in Hardy.