The death toll from extreme weather in the US on Sunday rose to at least five, after severe thunderstorms swept through the center of the country, spawning a tornado that flattened homes, gale force winds and widespread flooding from the country’s Upper Midwest to Appalachia.
The system that stretched from Texas to the Canadian Maritime Provinces prompted several emergency declarations even before the dangerous storms arrived.
In southwestern Michigan, the body of a 48-year-old man was found floating in floodwaters in Kalamazoo, city Public Safety Lieutenant David Thomas said.
Kalamazoo has hard hit by flooding from last week’s heavy rains and melting snow.
In Kentucky, authorities said that three people died.
Two bodies were on Saturday recovered from submerged vehicles in separate incidents.
Dallas Jane Combs, 79, died after a suspected tornado destroyed her Adairville, Kentucky, home earlier on Saturday, the Logan County Sheriff’s Office told media.
Authorities said Combs’ husband was outside putting up plastic to keep rain out of the home when he was blown into the basement area. He sustained minor injuries.
The fifth death was in northeast Arkansas, where an 83-year-old man was killed after high winds toppled a trailer home.
Clay County Sheriff Terry Miller told reporters that Albert Foster died Saturday night after the home was blown into a pond.
About 80km away, the US National Weather Service said the roof was blown off a hotel in Osceola, about 257km north of Memphis, Tennessee.
In Middle Tennessee, the service on Sunday confirmed that an EF-2 tornado with maximum winds of 193kph hit Clarksville on Saturday.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sandra Brandon said that at least four homes were destroyed and dozens of others were damaged, while 75 cars at a tire plant parking lot had their windows blown out or were tossed onto one other.
“To look at what I’m looking at and know we didn’t lose anybody is just a miracle,” Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett told the Leaf-Chronicle.
At Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, a teenage girl was on Saturday night hit by falling debris at a college basketball game after an apparent lightning strike knocked a hole in the arena’s roof.
School director of marketing and digital media Kevin Young said the 15-year-old girl was taken to a hospital as a precaution.
The governors of Missouri, Indiana and Illinois declared disaster emergencies. Flood watches and warnings on Sunday morning spanned multiple states, from Missouri to central Pennsylvania, while a wind advisory remained in effect for nearly all of Lower Michigan.
Wind gusts of up to 80kph in places have downed power lines in several states hugging Lake Michigan.
Consumers Energy said Sunday it was working to restore power to more than 20,000 customers across Michigan.
The weather service said moderate flooding was expected along the Ohio River in Kentucky and Ohio, including in Cincinnati, where the river was 2.4m above flood stage on Sunday.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in