Residents of Midwestern states mourned their dead Sunday after a string of killer tornadoes tore through the US heartland, killing at least 38 people, injuring hundreds and virtually wiping out entire communities.
Church services were to be held throughout the stricken region as stunned Americans grappled with the magnitude of the destruction brought by Friday’s twisters.
More trials, however, were in store for the disaster area. While tornado watches were discontinued, the National Weather Service forecast a cold front with possible snow.
Temperatures were expected to fall below freezing by Sunday night and a mix of rain and snow was to become all snow, the service warned, a development that could pose a challenge for people left without homes.
President Barack Obama called the governors of Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio to offer condolences for the dead and said the federal emergency management agency stood ready to help, the White House said.
Deaths were reported in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Alabama and Georgia as the storm system moved eastward.
“The scope and magnitude of devastation in some of our communities is unlike anything I have ever seen,” said Kentucky governor Steve Beshear, whose office confirmed 19 fatalities from over a dozen tornadoes that had roared across the state.
Trucks and trees were upended as deadly funnel clouds ravaged parts of eight states in the US Midwest and South. The devastating images included a school bus smashed through the wall of a house, trucks thrown into lakes, solid brick homes reduced to rubble and wooden ones smashed into kindling, as well as mobile homes flipped like tin cans.
About 300 injuries have been reported in Kentucky, according to Beshear, who surveyed the damage in the devastated town of West Liberty. There was damage in 40 counties with power supplies to tens of thousands knocked out. Amateur video aired on CNN showed a gargantuan grey twister churning over West Liberty on Friday, as a woman loudly prayed “Oh God, take it away from us Lord!”
At least 14 people were killed in Indiana, according to Governor Mitch Daniels, who inspected the devastation in Henryville. “We’re not unfamiliar with Mother Nature’s wrath out here in Indiana, but this is about as serious as I’ve seen it in my years in this job,” an emotional Daniels told reporters. “Lucky it wasn’t worse,” he said, adding that while early warning systems likely saved lives, it was a “heartbreaking” loss for families.
The high school in Henryville suffered damage, but luckily all the children were evacuated safely and only minor injuries — some cuts and scrapes — were reported, said sheriff department spokesman Chuck Adams. Officials in Clark County, Indiana were scrambling to deal with widespread damage after roads were blocked by fallen trees and debris, and power and phone lines were knocked out. The hardest hit was Marysville, where the small town has nearly ceased to exist, officials said. “That’s the information we have, that Marysville is no longer,” US Senator Dan Coats of Indiana told CNN.
The only good news amid all this death and devastation was a report that a two-year-old girl survived a terrifying tornado that killed her parents and siblings.
