ILLINOIS (AP) – At least 26 people have been killed and dozens more injured after storms and tornadoes tore through towns and cities across Southern and Midwestern parts of the United States.
Several tornadoes touched down across at least eight states, laying waste to homes and businesses and splintering trees, as part of a sprawling storm system that brought wildfires to the southern plains states and blizzard conditions to the upper Midwest.
Tens of thousands lost power as the storms smothered a swath of the country home to some 85 million people.
The dead included nine in the state of Tennessee, four in neighboring Arkansas, and four in Illinois. Other deaths were reported in the states of Indiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
In Arkansas, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated 100 members of the National Guard to help local authorities respond.
Four of the deaths in Arkansas were reported in the town of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people. Stunned residents of the town woke on Saturday to find the high school’s roof shredded and its windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.
Debris and memories of regular life lay scattered inside the shells of homes and on lawns: clothing, insulation, roofing paper, toys, splintered furniture, a pick-up truck with its windows shattered.
Ashley Macmillan told The Associated Press news agency that she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed, “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead”. A falling tree seriously damaged their home, but no one in the family was hurt.
“We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes rattling. And then it just got calm,” she said.
Recovery was already under way, with workers using chainsaws to cut fallen trees and bulldozers moving material from shattered structures. Utility trucks worked to restore power.
In the Little Rock area in Arkansas, at least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, authorities said.
Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said that 2,100 homes and businesses were in the tornado’s path, but that no assessment had been done on how many were damaged.
In Tennessee, at least seven people died in McNairy County, east of the city of Memphis, along the Mississippi border, said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.
“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” Leckner said, adding that although it appeared all people had been accounted for, crews were going door to door to be sure.
In Belvidere, Illinois, part of the roof of the Apollo Theatre collapsed as about 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert.