Death toll close to 300 after severe storm batters south, with authorities warning of more to come
The hilltop town of Rainsville, Alabama, bills itself as a peaceful area surrounded by beautiful ridges, valleys and lakes. By Thursday morning, after a mile-wide tornado had torn through six southern US states, killing at least 280 people, it almost seemed to have been erased from existence.
"It looks like something just washed parts of the town off the map," said Israel Partridge, a volunteer search and rescue worker. "Whole subdivisions, where there were 20 or 30 houses, there is nothing left. It is just totally gone. All that is left are the concrete steps leading up to rubble. It is not just that the houses have severe damage. They are gone."
By 3am on Thursday, when workers finally paused to rest, there were 35-45 bodies laid out at the fire department of a town with a population of 5,000, Partridge said.
Rainsville, north-east of Birmingham, ranked among the towns worst hit by the dozens of tornadoes unleashed on the south. By early evening, 280 people were confirmed dead across six states, with state officials warning the toll could rise. Barack Obama is due to visit on Friday.
The national weather service said more than 100 tornadoes had a part in the destruction, the deadliest since a 1974 storm killed 315 people. The authorities were warning that further storms were on their way.
"We are going to see more tornadoes and more severe weather across much of the south-east and into the north-east," said Craig Fugate, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in a video posted on the official website.
The national weather service has issued a number of short-lived tornado warnings, stretching into areas as far north as New York and south as far as Florida. There were flash flood warnings for parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Georgia. Severe thunderstorms were forecast for parts of Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia.
But the weather service said further storms were unlikely to match the severity of Wednesday's events.
At least 194 people were killed in Alabama alone. Mississippi reported 33 dead, Tennessee 33. In Georgia, 14 were killed, with five in Virgina and one in Kentucky. The governor of Alabama declared a state of emergency and mobilised the state's 1,400 members of the national guard.
Authorities reported that downed power lines and communications and blocked roads prevented them from gaining a full measure of the destruction. The tornadoes also forced a temporary shutdown at an Alabama nuclear plant, but the nuclear regulatory commission said there was no danger.
Among the other towns reporting heavy casualties and damage was the city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which reported 36 killed. "I don't know how anyone survived," the city's mayor, Walter Maddox, told reporters.
"We're used to tornadoes here in Tuscaloosa. It's part of growing up. But when you look at the path of destruction that's likely five to seven miles long in an area half a mile to a mile wide? it's an amazing scene. There's parts of the city I don't recognise."
Similar scenes unfolded across the south, with television images of heavily damaged churches and government buildings. In many instances, houses were lifted clear off their concrete foundations, and slammed back down, crushing those seeking shelter. From his home on Lookout Mountain, about a 10-minute drive from Rainsville, Partridge said: "By the grace of God, where I was it just missed us. You could see it coming towards us and it dumped us with debris, but it took a turn and missed us."
But Rainsville absorbed the full force of the storm system. Landmarks such as the sports Coliseum were reduced to twisted rubble. An entire trailer park, which had housed 73 mobile homes, was destroyed.
"Even the houses that made it suffered severe damage," said Partridge.
And it was still difficult to get a full measure of the destruction, with roads blocked by debris, tree trunks and downed power lines, and telephone lines and electricity still not fully restored.
Disturbingly, meterologists say that America's traditional "tornado alley" in the Midwest has been undergoing a slow migration, with the danger zone now extending further into the south-east.
US weather forecasters have been warning for days of a powerful storm coming up out of the south-east. Schools were shut and many took a day off work. But a number of survivors said that they had not grasped the gravity of the situation.
Some said that the warnings had been cut short by power failures, or that they had been caught off guard when cellphone towers went down.
Others admitted that they had become used to severe weather warnings. "I believe it caught most people by surprise, or they believed that most portions of their homes would be secure enough when, in fact, most of their homes are completely gone," Partridge said.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/28/deadliest-tornadoes-hundreds-dead-us
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