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Rescuers search for more tornado victims, 55 dead

Crews searched for more victims of tornadoes that killed at least 55 people and injured hundreds more as they tore across five US states, ripping off a shopping mall roof, demolishing mobile homes and blowing apart warehouses.

It was the country's deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years. Dozens of tornadoes plowed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.

The storms flattened entire streets, smashed warehouses and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber. Some looked like life-size dollhouses, their walls sheared away. Crews going door to door to search for bodies had to contend with downed power lines, snapped trees and flipped-over cars.

"We had a beautiful neighborhood. Now it's hell," said 80-year-old Bonnie Brawner of Hartsville, Tennessee, a community about an hour from Nashville where a natural gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 120m high.

Hundreds of houses were damaged or destroyed. Authorities had no immediate cost estimate of the damage.

US President George W. Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency center in Georgia.

Thirty-one people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said. It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985.

Students took cover in their dormitory bathrooms as the storms closed in on Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

More than 20 students at the Southern Baptist school were trapped behind wreckage and jammed doors after the dormitories came down around them.

Danny Song was pinned for an hour and a half until rescuers dug him from the rubble.

"We looked up and saw the funnel coming in. We started running and then glass just exploded," he said. "I hit the floor and a couch was shoved up against me, which may have saved my life because the roof fell on top of it."

Most towns had ample warning that the storms were coming. Forecasters had warned for days severe weather was possible. The National Weather Service issued more than 1,000 tornado warnings from 3pm on Tuesday to 6am on Wednesday in the 11-state area where the weather was heading.

The conditions for bad weather had lined up so perfectly that the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, put out an alert six days in advance.

"All the clues were there. It was just unfortunate that it came out the way it did," prediction center director Joseph Schaefer said.

Some residents found reason to be thankful. In Castalian Springs, Tennessee, a baby was discovered unscathed in a field across from a demolished post office. There was no word on the child's parents.

"He had debris all over him, but there were no obvious sings of trauma," said Ken Weidner, Sumner County emergency management director.
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