Tornado-hit US states get some respite
Source: Agencies |
March 5, 2012, Monday
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CALM weather gave dazed residents of storm-wracked towns a respite early yesterday as they dug out from a chain of tornadoes that cut a swath of destruction from the United States' Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, killing at least 39 people.
The twisters spawned by massive thunderstorms splintered homes, damaged schools and a prison, and tossed around vehicles, killing 20 people in Kentucky, 14 in neighboring Indiana, three in Ohio and one in Alabama, officials said. Georgia also reported a storm-related death.
"We're not unfamiliar with Mother Nature's wrath out here in Indiana," Governor Mitch Daniels told CNN during a visit to the stricken southeast corner of the state.
"But this is about as serious as we've seen in the years since I've been in this job," he said at the hard-hit town of Henryville, which declared a nighttime curfew to prevent looting. Friday's storms came on top of severe weather earlier in the week in the Midwest and brought the death toll from the unseasonably early storms this week to at least 52 people.
Tornadoes smashed Indiana and Kentucky hard, with Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee overrun as well. But the National Weather Service forecast a mild morning for the hardest hit areas on Sunday, with rain or snow possible in some areas.
President Barack Obama called the governors of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to offer condolences and assure them the federal government was ready to help if needed, the White House said.
Footage from Indiana and Kentucky showed houses ripped from their foundations. In Georgia, light planes were lifted off the tarmac of a regional airport. In Indiana, a school bus was slammed into a building.
In one sign of hope, a 2-year-old girl, orphaned by the tornado, was found alive but badly hurt in a field in southeast Indiana, miles from her home, authorities said.
The toddler, who remained in critical condition in a Kentucky hospital. Her parents, a 2-month-old sister and a 3-year-old brother, were all killed, said a spokeswoman for Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville.
The storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes, after 550 deaths in the US were blamed on them last year - the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
The twisters spawned by massive thunderstorms splintered homes, damaged schools and a prison, and tossed around vehicles, killing 20 people in Kentucky, 14 in neighboring Indiana, three in Ohio and one in Alabama, officials said. Georgia also reported a storm-related death.
"We're not unfamiliar with Mother Nature's wrath out here in Indiana," Governor Mitch Daniels told CNN during a visit to the stricken southeast corner of the state.
"But this is about as serious as we've seen in the years since I've been in this job," he said at the hard-hit town of Henryville, which declared a nighttime curfew to prevent looting. Friday's storms came on top of severe weather earlier in the week in the Midwest and brought the death toll from the unseasonably early storms this week to at least 52 people.
Tornadoes smashed Indiana and Kentucky hard, with Alabama, Georgia, Ohio and Tennessee overrun as well. But the National Weather Service forecast a mild morning for the hardest hit areas on Sunday, with rain or snow possible in some areas.
President Barack Obama called the governors of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to offer condolences and assure them the federal government was ready to help if needed, the White House said.
Footage from Indiana and Kentucky showed houses ripped from their foundations. In Georgia, light planes were lifted off the tarmac of a regional airport. In Indiana, a school bus was slammed into a building.
In one sign of hope, a 2-year-old girl, orphaned by the tornado, was found alive but badly hurt in a field in southeast Indiana, miles from her home, authorities said.
The toddler, who remained in critical condition in a Kentucky hospital. Her parents, a 2-month-old sister and a 3-year-old brother, were all killed, said a spokeswoman for Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville.
The storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes, after 550 deaths in the US were blamed on them last year - the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
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