Washington: The death count from devastating and destructive tornadoes that scrapped the American South and Midwest had risen to 32, while parts of the Southern Plains braced for the possibility of their own round of severe weather, according to CNN.
The storm, which broke into America’s houses, came on Friday and till now, had crushed homes and businesses, ripped roofs off buildings, splintered trees and sent vehicles flying.
In Wynne, Arkansas, where four people have been killed, was cleaved in half by one such tornado, leaving a line of destruction from the city’s western limit to its eastern, according to Mayor Jennifer Hobbs, who told CNN Sunday and added, “We’re just gonna need all the help that we can (get) to help these families recover”.
Deaths have been confirmed across a wide swath of states, with multiple victims reported in Arkansas, Indiana and Tennessee, where the statewide death toll rose to 15 Sunday, officials said.
Three of the deaths were in Memphis: Two children and one adult were found dead after police responded to calls about trees that had fallen on homes, the Memphis Police Department said in a news release.
After the report of various tornadoes in Arkansas, the governor declared a state of emergency Friday afternoon after officials said one person was killed in North Little Rock and two died in Wynne. A state of emergency was also declared in Missouri in response to severe weather, CNN reported.
On Friday night in northern Illinois, a person was killed and 28 others were hospitalized after the roof collapsed at a theatre in Belvidere with 260 people inside, told the fire chief, Shawn Schadle, reported New York Times.
Roughly 150 miles to the east of Sherman, in Sullivan Country, Ind., three people were also killed after a tornado touched down, according to Sgt. Matt Ames with the Indiana State Police.
In addition to Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana and Tennessee, tornadoes were reported to the National Weather Service across Wisconsin, Iowa and Mississippi. As the storm system moved eastward early Saturday, tornado warnings remained in place for parts of Alabama and Georgia, according to the National Weather Service.
An overnight tornado, which makes people most prone to extensive damages, levelled much of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where estimated maximum winds of 170 mph roared.
President Biden on Friday visited Rolling Fork, the Mississippi community hit hardest by the tornadoes last week. Tornadoes killed 13 people and destroyed homes and businesses in Rolling Fork and in surrounding Sharkey County.
Biden earlier declared broad areas of the country major disaster areas, making federal resources and financial aid available to support recovery.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas, where at least five people were killed, already had declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard.
Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in 11 states destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees and laid waste to neighborhoods.
The National Weather Service confirmed Sunday that a tornado was responsible for damage to several homes near Bridgeville, Delaware. One person was found dead inside a house heavily damaged by the storm Saturday night, Delaware State Police reported.
It may take days to confirm all the recent tornadoes and where they touched down. The dead also included at least nine in one Tennessee county, five in Indiana and four in Illinois.
Other deaths from the storms that hit Friday night into Saturday were reported in Alabama and Mississippi.
Residents of Wynne, Arkansas, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke Saturday to find the high school’s roof shredded and its windows blown out. At least four people died.
Ashley Macmillan said she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed, “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead.” A falling tree seriously damaged their home, but they got out unhurt.
Chainsaws buzzed, as bulldozers plowed into debris. Utility crews restored power as some neighborhoods began recovery.
Nine people died in Tennessee’s McNairy County, east of Memphis, according to Patrick Sheehan, director the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee drove to the county Saturday to tour the destruction and comfort residents. He said the storm capped the “worst” week of his time as governor, coming days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people including a family friend whose funeral he and his wife attended earlier in the day.
“It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Lee said. “But it looks like your community has done what Tennessean communities do, and that is rally and respond.”
Jeffrey Day said he called his daughter after seeing on the news that their community of Adamsville was being hit. Huddled in a closet with her 2-year-old son as the storm passed over, she answered the phone screaming.
“She kept asking me, ‘What do I do, daddy?’” Day said, tearing up. “I didn’t know what to say.”
After the storm passed, his daughter crawled out of her destroyed home and drove to nearby family.
In Memphis, police spokesperson Christopher Williams said via email late Saturday that there were three apparent weather-related deaths there: two children and an adult who died when a tree fell on a house.
Tennessee officials warned that a repeat of similar weather conditions is expected Tuesday.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker traveled Sunday to Belvidere to visit the Apollo Theatre, which partially collapsed as about 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert. A 50-year-old man who was pulled from the rubble later died.
The governor said 48 others were treated in hospitals, with five in critical condition.
Pritzker also planned to visit Crawford County, about 230 miles south of Chicago, where three people were killed and eight injured when a tornado hit around New Hebron.
“We’ve had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house is collapsed on top of them, but luckily they had that safe space to go to,” Sheriff Bill Rutan said at a news conference.
That tornado was not far from where three people died in Indiana’s Sullivan County, about 95 miles southwest of Indianapolis. Several people were rescued overnight, with reports of as many as 12 people injured.
In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than 50 were hurt, some critically. The National Weather Service said that tornado was a high-end EF3 twister with up to 165 mph winds and a path as long as 25 miles.
Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was having lunch at home when the tornado roared through his neighborhood. He hid in the laundry room as sheetrock fell and windows shattered. When he emerged, the house was mostly rubble.
“Everything around me is sky,” he recalled Saturday.
Another suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama’s Madison County, officials said, and in northern Mississippi’s Pontotoc County, authorities confirmed one death and four injuries.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Washington: At least 26 people have been killed after a series of tornadoes and deadly storms struck through towns and cities in several US states, authorities said on Sunday.
Homes were destroyed and thousands left without power after huge storms caused devastation across several states, the BBC reported.
According to the National Weather Service of the US, there have been more than 80 reported tornadoes since Friday.
States including Arkansas, Tennessee, Illinois, Indiana, Alabama and Mississippi have all had fatalities.
One storm shredded through the Arkansas town of Wynne — a community, around 170 km from the state capital, Little Rock.
A school was badly damaged, with some buildings torn to pieces. One of its teachers, Lisa Worden, said a decision to send pupils home early was critical.
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency in the state of Arkansas on Friday, with the national guard activated to help with recovery efforts.
She said she had spoken to US President Joe Biden about the situation, who promised federal aid.
Friday’s storms also led to the collapse of a theatre roof at a packed heavy metal gig in Belvidere, Illinois state, leading to one death and 28 injuries.
As storms continue to work their way east, hundreds of thousands of people are without power across several states.
Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania are the worst affected, according to the US PowerOutage website.
In a bulletin, the Storm Prediction Center warned some of the projected tornadoes could track across the ground for long distances.
The deadly tornadoes come a week after a rare, long-track twister killed 26 people in Mississippi.
The Mississippi tornado last week travelled 94 km and lasted about an hour and 10 minutes — an unusually long period of time for a storm to sustain itself. It damaged about 2,000 homes, officials said.
President Biden visited the state on Friday to pay his condolences.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb on Saturday declared disaster emergencies for Sullivan and Johnson counties.
Fatalities were also reported in Alabama and Mississippi, and tornadoes also caused damage in eastern Iowa.
From northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, including Chicago and Milwaukee, tornado watches extend nearly 1,000 miles all the way to Mississippi and Texas, affecting tens of thousands of people on Friday, according to AccuWeather.
It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center.
There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, said Bunting, adding that “that’s a quite active day… but that’s not unprecedented.”
Just one week ago, a massive tornado levelled a town in the southern US state of Mississippi, claiming 25 lives. The 26th death was reported in Alabama during the same round of turbulent weather.
The latest “intense supercell thunderstorms” are only expected to become more common in middle and southern US states, as temperatures rise around the world, experts say.
Residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke Saturday to find the high school’s roof shredded and its windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.
Debris lay scattered inside the shells of homes and on lawns: clothing, insulation, toys, splintered furniture, a pickup truck with its windows shattered.
Ashley Macmillan said she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed, “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead.” A falling tree seriously damaged their home, but they were unhurt.
“We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes rattling. And then it just got calm,” she said.
Recovery was already underway, with workers using chainsaws and bulldozers to clear the area and utility crews restoring power.
Nine people died in Tennessee’s McNairy County, east of Memphis, according to Patrick Sheehan, director the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.
Gov. Bill Lee drove to the county Saturday to tour the destruction and comfort residents. He said the storm capped the “worst” week of his time as governor, coming days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people including a family friend whose funeral he and his wife, Maria, attended earlier in the day.
“It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Lee said. “But it looks like your community has done what Tennessean communities do, and that is rally and respond.”
Jeffrey Day said he called his daughter after seeing on the news that their community of Adamsville was being hit. Huddled in a closet with her 2-year-old son as the storm passed over, she answered the phone screaming.
“She kept asking me, ‘What do I do, daddy?’” Day said, tearing up. “I didn’t know what to say.”
After the storm passed, his daughter crawled out of her destroyed home and over barbed wire and drove to nearby family. On Saturday evening, baby clothes were still strewn about the site.
In Memphis, police spokesman Christopher Williams said via email late Saturday that there were three deaths believed to be weather-related: two children and an adult who died when a tree fell on a house.
Tennessee officials warned that the same weather conditions from Friday night are expected to return Tuesday.
In Belvidere, Illinois, part of the roof of the Apollo Theatre collapsed as about 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert. A 50-year-old man was pulled from the rubble.
“I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him), ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do,” concertgoer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.
The man was dead by the time emergency workers arrived. Officials said 40 others were hurt, including two with life-threatening injuries.
Crews cleaned up around the Apollo on Saturday, with forklifts pulling away loose bricks. Business owners picked up glass shards and covered shattered windows.
In Crawford County, Illinois, three people were killed and eight injured when a tornado hit around New Hebron, said Bill Burke, the county board chair.
Sheriff Bill Rutan said 60 to 100 families were displaced.
“We’ve had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house is collapsed on top of them, but luckily they had that safe space to go to,” Rutan said at a news conference.
That tornado was not far from where three people died in Indiana’s Sullivan County, about 95 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is essentially unrecognizable right now” and several people were rescued overnight. There were reports of as many as 12 people injured, he said.
“I’m really, really shocked there isn’t more as far as human issues,” he said, adding that recovery “is going to be a very long process.”
In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than 50 were hurt, some critically.
The National Weather Service said that tornado was a high-end EF3 twister with wind speeds up to 165 mph and a path as long as 25 miles.
Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was lunching at home when it roared through his neighborhood, causing him to hide in the laundry room as sheetrock fell and windows shattered. When he emerged, the house was mostly rubble.
“Everything around me is sky,” Shahed-Ghaznavi recalled Saturday. He barely slept Friday night.
“When I closed my eyes, I couldn’t sleep, imagined I was here,” he said Saturday outside his home.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. On Saturday, Sanders requested a major disaster declaration from President Joe Biden to support recovery efforts with federal resources.
Another suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama’s Madison County, officials said, and in northern Mississippi’s Pontotoc County, authorities confirmed one death and four injuries.
Tornadoes also caused damage in eastern Iowa and broke windows northeast of Peoria, Illinois.
The storms struck just hours after Biden visited Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where tornadoes last week destroyed parts of town.
It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes from the latest event, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.
“That’s a quite active day,” he said. “But that’s not unprecedented.”
More than 530,000 homes and businesses were without power as of midday Saturday, over 200,000 of them in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us.
The sprawling storm system also brought wildfires to the southern Plains, with authorities in Oklahoma reporting nearly 100 of them Friday. At least 32 people were said to be injured, and more than 40 homes destroyed.
The storms also caused blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest.
A threat of tornadoes and hail remained for the Northeast including in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
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Washington: At least 21 people have been killed and more than 130 others injured after strong tornadoes and deadly storms struck multiple midwestern and southern US states Friday into early Saturday, authorities said on Sunday.
According to CNN, more than 50 preliminary tornado reports were recorded on Friday in at least seven US states.
Four people died and dozens more were hurt when a confirmed strong tornado tore through Wynne, the county seat and largest city of Cross County, Arkansas, according to local media outlet Region 8 News.
There was “total destruction throughout the town” and dozens of residents were trapped following the tornado, Xinhua News Agnecy reported quoting Wynne Police Chief Richard Dennis.
One person died and at least 50 people were sent to hospitals in Little Rock, Arkansas, after a violent tornado caused severe damage on Friday afternoon, according to Pulaski County officials.
“Close to 2,600 structures have been impacted,” Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. told CNN on Saturday.
At least seven people were killed in McNairy County, which is located in southwest Tennessee, State Governor Bill Lee said in a statement.
A 50-year-old man was killed on the scene when the roof of the Apollo Theatre in Belvidere, northern Illinois collapsed on Friday night. Up to 40 others were taken to hospitals, with at least two of them in critical condition, officials said.
Three others were killed following the collapse of a residential structure in Crawford County, southern Illinois, according to Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokesperson Kevin Sur.
Also on Friday night, three people died while multiple residences and the volunteer fire department were damaged in Sullivan County, Indiana, State Police Sgt. Matt Ames said.
Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb on Saturday declared disaster emergencies for Sullivan and Johnson counties.
Fatalities were also reported in Alabama and Mississippi, and tornadoes also caused damage in eastern Iowa.
From northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, including Chicago and Milwaukee, tornado watches extend nearly 1,000 miles all the way to Mississippi and Texas, affecting tens of thousands of people on Friday, according to AccuWeather.
It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center.
There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, said Bunting, adding that “that’s a quite active day … but that’s not unprecedented.”
Just one week ago, a massive tornado leveled a town in the southern U.S. state of Mississippi, claiming 25 lives. The 26th death was reported in Alabama during the same round of turbulent weather.
The latest “intense supercell thunderstorms” are only expected to become more common in middle and southern US states, as temperatures rise around the world, experts say.
Washington: US President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration for the southern state of Mississippi after deadly tornadoes.
Biden on early Sunday ordered federal aid to supplement recovery efforts in the areas affected by “severe storms, straight-line winds, and tornadoes” from Friday to Saturday, Xinhua news agency reported.
“Twenty-five Mississippians were killed overnight due to this severe weather,” the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said in a statement, warning that a large portion of the state has the potential to see severe storms on Sunday evening.
“Expect damaging wind gusts. Tornadoes cannot be ruled out,” the agency tweeted.
