Tornado rips apart US town

Dozens of people were injured when a tornado tore apart a town in the US, levelling a church and a petrol station, witnesses and officials said.

The tornado struck the town of Ladysmith in north west Wisconsin yesterday, the US National Weather Service said. There was virtually nothing left of several town centre businesses shown on television footage.

“Most of the town is a disaster. There’s buildings missing, down, torn apart - everything,” said Christine Wright, an employee at the Holiday Station Store, a town centre petrol station. “They’re shutting the town down.”

Wisconsin Governor Scott McCallum declared Ladysmith a disaster area and planned to visit the site today, spokesman Tim Roby said.

Mr McCallum verbally gave the go-ahead for rescue workers to start working under the declaration last night and the state emergency management team was on its way to assess the damage, Mr Roby said.

Thirty people were treated in hospital, with 18 dismissed and the other 12 with non-life threatening injuries, said administrator Mike Shaw. He said so far there had been no reports of deaths.

Sandy Zajec, who owns a Ladysmith radio station, told KARE-TV in Minneapolis that the Baptist church and an Amoco petrol station were levelled and the top floors of a motel and the fire department were ripped off.

“There was like no warning,” she said. “It was just there ... right in the centre of downtown Ladysmith.”

Red Cross dispatcher Kathy Nelson in nearby Eau Claire County said a four-block area of Ladysmith was destroyed, and the Red Cross was sending numerous response teams to set up emergency shelters for people who were left homeless.

An aid station was set up at a school in Bruce, about 10 miles west of Ladysmith, American Red Cross spokeswoman Jodi Oman said.

“Right now, we’re still picking people up. We’re still checking houses for people that we don’t know if they got out yet,” Ms Oman said.

The storm moved out of the area by early evening, said meteorologist Tony Zaleski of the National Weather Service Minneapolis office.