Residents surveyed flattened, debris-strewn neighborhoods and told of pulling bodies from rubble, a day after dozens of tornadoes spawned by a powerful storm system wiped out towns across the U.S. South. More than 200 people were killed in the deadliest outbreak in nearly 40 years, and officials said Thursday they expected the death toll to rise.
In Alabama, where as many as a million people were without power, Gov. Robert Bentley said 2,000 National Guard troops had been activated and were helping to search devastated areas for people still missing. He said the National Weather Service and forecasters did a good job of alerting people, but there is only so much that can be done to deal with tornadoes a mile wide.
Dave Imy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center, said the number of deaths was the most in a tornado outbreak since 1974, when 315 people died. The center said it received 137 tornado reports around the region into Wednesday night.
Click on the map below to see images from the massive storm system and learn how a tornado is formed. Last updated 2 p.m. ET
"It's going to take many days, perhaps even a couple of weeks, for the National Weather Service to sort out all the details," said the center's Rich Thompson. And more storms could be in the offing. "We still have occasional damaging wind and tornado threat all the way from central New York and eastern Pennsylvania, southward ... into east central Georgia and even storms back into the Florida panhandle and southwest Georgia," Thompson said.
Most of the deaths ? totaling 248 so far ? were in Alabama, which has confirmed more than 160 fatalities. People were also killed in Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky.
Governors in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia each issued emergency declarations for parts of their states.
President Obama said he had spoken with Alabama's governor and approved his request for emergency federal assistance.
"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement. He said he would travel to Alabama on Friday to view storm damage and meet with the governor and affected families.
'Like A Bomb Has Been Dropped' In Birmingham
The mayor of Birmingham, Ala., told NPR's Steve Inskeep on Thursday morning that the Pratt City area had been "totally devastated" and surrounding neighborhoods were heavily damaged.
"You're talking about whole neighborhoods of housing just completely gone. Churches, gone. Businesses, gone. I'm not talking about just roofs being blown off but just completely gone," Mayor William Bell said. "It's hard to imagine a heavily populated area that now seems like a bomb has been dropped on it. And just where buildings once stood, toothpick-size wood shreds are there now."
Concrete steps lead to the footprint of a mobile home scraped from the earth by a tornado that ripped across Preston, Miss., on Wednesday.
Concrete steps lead to the footprint of a mobile home scraped from the earth by a tornado that ripped across Preston, Miss., on Wednesday.
He said the governor is sending National Guardsmen to help with search and rescue and security, and the city will be counting on federal help, too. The municipal auditorium is serving as a temporary shelter, he said.
"We've been talking to local ministers about opening up their churches and assisting us in getting clothing and supplies to families who now have nothing," Bell said, "and that's going to be a tremendous task over the next several weeks, if not several months."
The most urgent need is water and clothing, he said. "If anyone can get clothing down to the Boutwell Auditorium, which is in our downtown area, that would be a tremendous help. Children's clothing, adult clothing, any water that you can make available. We need lots of water."
The bad weather was not a total surprise in Alabama ? some schools had canceled classes, government offices closed early, and newspapers warned of the possibility of severe storms. Still, the ferocity of what showed up was shocking.
'Utter Destruction' In Tuscaloosa
Some of the worst damage was in Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 that is home to the University of Alabama. Neighborhoods there were leveled by a massive tornado, caught on video by multiple sources, that barreled through Wednesday, right around the 5 p.m. rush hour.
Back from an aerial tour Thursday morning, Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox said the tornado tore a streak as many as 4 miles long and a half-mile wide of "utter destruction." At least 36 people were dead in the city's police jurisdiction, and searches continue for the missing.
"We have neighborhoods that have been basically removed from the map," he said.
Alabama Public Radio's Pat Duggins reported "trees down everywhere, trees uprooted, snapped, cars tossed around like toys."
University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.
At the city's main hospital, DCH, dozens of patients lined the corridors waiting for treatment. As many as 2,000 doctors and nurses were working on the wounded at the hospital, which had to operate on backup power. "We do a lot to prepare. But I don't know how you prepare for anything of this magnitude," chief nurse Patrice Jones said.
As quickly as doctors treated the injured, waves of new patients flooded in, creating a new problem. "We've had so many folks and clearing them out, and then they have no place to get home to and no way to get there if they did," DCH spokesman Brad Fisher said.
'An Awful Experience' In Pleasant Grove
In the Birmingham suburb of Pleasant Grove, the storm slammed heavy pickup trucks into ditches and obliterated tidy brick houses, leaving behind a mess of mattresses, electronics and children's toys scattered across a grassy plain where dozens used to live.
Lynn Crawley, who grew up in Pleasant Grove, said she heard the storm coming and ran next-door to her mother's house. The tornado obliterated the roof and walls. Only the hallway was left standing ? the hallway she and her mother were huddling in.
"It finally got quiet and took us a while to realize and [we were] able to move and able to kind of pull ourselves out from under it," Crawley said. "The roof was gone. Everything was like, wow. It was raining. It was an awful experience."
The storm also forced the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant about 30 miles west of Huntsville to shut down its three units because of damage to the utility's transmission lines, the Tennessee Valley Authority said. Diesel generators were being used to cool the reactors. The safety systems operated as needed, and the emergency event was classified as the lowest of four levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.
The violent weather system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out. It came on the heels of another system that killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi earlier this week, and caused widespread flooding in Missouri and the Ohio River Valley.
NPR's Russell Lewis and Alabama Public Radio's Pat Duggins reported from Tuscaloosa, Ala., for this story, which contains material from The Associated Press.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/28/135792410/violate-storms-devastate-parts-of-the-south?ft=1&f=1025
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