Auntie Em, Auntie Em
Lafayette, Tenn. — Residents in five Southern states tried to salvage what they could Wednesday from homes reduced to piles of debris, a day after the deadliest cluster of tornadoes in nearly a decade tore through the region, snapping trees and crumpling homes. At least 52 people were dead. Labels: disasters
Rescue crews, some with the help of the National Guard, went door-to-door looking for more victims. Dozens of twisters were reported as the storms swept through Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.
Seavia Dixon, whose Atkins, Ark., home was shattered, stood Wednesday morning 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 from the home.
The family's brand 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.
Twenty-eight 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 when they stayed behind to calm their horses. The community town of about 3,000 some 60 miles northwest of Little Rock was among the hardest hit.
Shannon Barnes, his mother and her husband waited out the storm in the basement of the woman's house near the St. Vincent community, not far from Atkins. After not hearing anything, Barnes went upstairs and found the tornado bearing down on the house.
"It wasn't like they say. They say it sounds like a freight train," Barnes said Wednesday as he collected his clothes and other belongings. "It was silent. A bunch of wind."
Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old uncle, 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.
"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."
The system moved eastward to Alabama on 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, but the storms appeared to weaken as they approached the coast.
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.
More than 20 students were stuck behind wreckage and jammed doors, mostly for short periods, in battered dormitories at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. Tornadoes had hit the campus in the past, and students knew the drill when they heard sirens, university President David S. Dockery said.
"When the sirens went off the entire process went into place quickly," Dockery said. Students "were ushered into rooms, into the bathrooms, interior spaces."
About 50 students were taken to a hospital and nine stayed through the night, but all would be fine, he said.
In Memphis, high wind collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Bricks, air conditioners and other debris were scattered in the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.
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. The death toll ranks among the top 15 from tornado outbreaks since 1950, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the center in Norman, Okla., just south of Oklahoma City.
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.
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