 |
Twisters ravage southern USA
• 48 killed as 40 tornadoes hit southern UK States
 Images |
|
|
 Related Articles |
|
|
 On the Web |
|
|
By
May-Zee Krakatoa, Environment Editor
Wednesday,
6 February, 2008
Overnight, scores of tornadoes tore through Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Tennessee on 5 Feburary 2008. As of 12:30 p.m. ET on February 6, at least 48 people had been killed, according to the Associated Press. The powerful storms demolished warehouses, a college dormitory, and a shopping mall and scores of homes.
The victims included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and 7 in Kentucky. Among those killed were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock. Hundreds more were injured.
The family died from trauma when their home "took a direct hit" from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said. Neighbors and friends who were there said, 'There used to be a home there,'" Krout said.
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."
Ray Story tried to get his 70-year-old brother, Bill Clark, to a hospital after the storms leveled his mobile home in Macon County, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) 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," Nova Story said. "I looked him right in the eye and he died right there in front of me."
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.
The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a rare spasm of winter weather that raged across the nation's midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primary elections.
As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates hoping to win the presidential election next fall—including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, and Mike Huckabee—paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.
Before dawn Wednesday, the system moved on to Alabama, bringing heavy rains and gusty winds and causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham.
La Nina the cause?
Recent studies have found an increase in tornadoes in parts of the southern U.S. during the winter during a La Nina. On Jan. 8, tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Two died in the Missouri storms.
In this round of storms, there were 67 eyewitness accounts of tornadoes but the number of twisters likely won't be that high because some probably saw the same funnel cloud, said Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. He said a reasonable guess is that 30 to 40 tornadoes touched down.
The Naked Reader
| |
![Bolts of lightning split the sky over Tyler, Texas, the night of February 5. [italic]Photograph by Dr. Scott M. Lieberman/AP[/italic]](http://onthelam.solupress.com/onthelam/news/article_images/article_image_small442.jpg)
![Tornado touchdown in Atkins Arkansas at 5pm on 5 February 2008 [italic]. Photograph by Mike Avery/The Courier/AP[/italic]](http://onthelam.solupress.com/onthelam/news/article_images/article_image_small443.jpg)
