Twisters kill at least 52 in Southern states

LAFAYETTE, Tenn. - Rescue crews, some with the help of the National Guard, went door-to-door looking for more victims a day after a cluster of tornadoes tore through the South, killing at least 52 people and injuring several hundred.

Residents in five states tried to salvage what they could Wednesday from homes reduced to piles of debris. Tens of thousands were without power after dozens of twisters were reported in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.

Seavia Dixon, whose home in Atkins, Ark., was shattered, stood in her yard, holding muddy baby pictures of her son, who is now a 20-year-old soldier in Iraq. Only a concrete slab was left.

The family’s new white pickup truck was upside-down, about 150 yards from where it was parked before the storm. Another pickup truck the family owned sat crumpled about 50 feet from the slab.

“You know, it’s just material things,” Dixon said, her voice breaking. “We can replace them. We were just lucky to survive.”

In many places, the storms struck as Super Tuesday primaries were ending. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

At least 28 people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said.

Among the victims were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old daughter in Atkins, a community of about 3,000 approximately 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.

The family died from trauma when their home “took a direct hit” from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.

Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old brother, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles northeast of Nashville. Clark died as Story and his wife tried to navigate debris-strewn roads in their pickup truck, they said.

“He never had a chance,” Story’s wife, Nova, said. “I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me.”

President Bush said he called the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee and assured them the administration was ready to help and to deal with any emergency requests.

“Loss of life, loss of property — prayers can help and so can the government,” Bush said. “I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them.”

Ala., Fla., Ga. on tornado watch
The system moved eastward to Alabama Wednesday, bringing heavy rain and gusty wind, causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham. The National Weather Service posted tornado watches for parts of southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and western Georgia. Weather service experts also investigated damage in Indiana to see if it was caused by tornadoes.

An apparent tornado damaged eight homes in Walker County, Ala., and a pregnant woman suffered a broken arm when a trailer home was tossed by the wind, said county emergency management director Johnny Burnette.

“I was there before daylight and it looked like a war zone,” he said.

Northeast of Nashville, a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station. The station took a direct hit from the storm, but no deaths connected to the fire were reported.

About 200 yards from the edge of the plant, Bonnie and Frank Brawner picked through the rubble of their home for photographs and other personal items. The storm sheared off the second story of the home.

“We had a beautiful neighborhood, now it’s hell,” said Bonnie Brawner, 80.

University hit hard

In Jackson, Tenn., more than 20 students on Tuesday night found themselves stuck behind wreckage and jammed doors in battered dormitories at Union University.

“I’ve never been through anything like that before — the noise. Your ears pop. It makes your skin kind of crawl. It’s really creepy,” said sophomore Andrew Norman, 20, one of eight men who huddled in a bathroom during the storm. Afterward, they had to crawl out a bathroom window because wreckage blocked other exits.

Tornadoes had hit the campus in the past, and students knew the drill when they heard sirens, said Union University President David S. Dockery. “When the sirens went off the entire process went into place quickly,” Dockery said. Students “were ushered into rooms, into the bathrooms, interior spaces.”

He said about 50 students were taken to a hospital and nine stayed through the night. But all would be fine, he said. The students “demonstrated who they are and I’m so proud of them.”

“We’ve seen damage on this campus before but nothing that even comes close,” Dockery told reporters in the televised news conference. “You see these major buildings — $20 million academic buildings — that roofs are off of them. It’s hard to even think about what is in front of us in terms of rebuilding.”

In Memphis, high wind collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Debris that included bricks and air conditioning units was scattered on the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.

A few people north of the mall took shelter under a bridge and were washed away in the Wolf River, but they were pulled out with only scrapes, said Steve Cole of the Memphis Police Department.

In Mississippi, Desoto County Sheriff’s Department Cmdr. Steve Atkinson said a twister shredded warehouses in an industrial park in the city of Southaven, just south of Memphis.

“It ripped the warehouses apart. The best way to describe it is it looks like a bomb went off,” Atkinson said.

Winter tornadoes are not uncommon. The peak tornado season is late winter through midsummer, but the storms can happen at any time of the year with the right conditions.

But this batch was the nation’s worst in a 24-hour period since May 3, 1999, when some 50 people died in Oklahoma and Kansas.

Severity tied to La Nina?
The tornadoes could be due to La Nina, the cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can cause changes in weather patterns around the world. It is the opposite of the better-known El Nino, a periodic warming of the same region.

Recent studies have found an increase in tornadoes in parts of the southern U.S. during the winter during a La Nina. On Jan. 8, tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Two died in the Missouri storms.

In this round of storms, there were 67 witness accounts of tornadoes but the number of twisters likely won’t be that high because some probably saw the same funnel cloud, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. He said a reasonable guess is that 30 to 40 tornadoes touched down.

Most communities had ample warning that the storms were coming — forecasts had warned for days that severe weather was possible. But in at least one rural community, there was no siren to alert residents the severe weather had arrived.

In Kentucky’s Allen County, officials have requested funding for a siren at the fire station, but don’t have one yet. Even if they did, officials wondered if it would have helped.

“It came in quick,” Judge-Executive Bobby Young said. “Probably, warning devices wouldn’t have helped any.”