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.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS