US tornado kills at least 22

A tornado with winds of more than 158mph has torn a path of devastation through western Kentucky and southern Indiana as people slept, killing at least 22, smashing dozens of mobile homes and reducing entire blocks of buildings to rubble.

Two hundred people were said to have been injured.

Rescuers who arrived at Eastbrooke Mobile Home Park in Evansville, Indiana, shortly after the tornado struck early yesterday, reported seeing children wandering in the debris, looking for their parents, and parents searching for missing children.

Children’s bicycles and other toys were strewn amid mattresses, chairs and insulation.

The tornado, the deadliest to hit the state since 1974, began by hitting a horse racing track near Henderson, Kentucky, then crossed into Indiana at around 2am.

“It was just a real loud roar. It didn’t seem like it lasted over 45 seconds to a minute, then it was calm again,” said Steve Gaiser, who lives near Eastbrook mobile home park.

At least 17 people were killed at the site, according to Eric Williams of the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Department.

More people were believed to still be trapped in the debris, and National Guard units were called in to help with search-and-recovery efforts.

“They were in trailer homes, homes that were just torn apart by the storm, so they’re just now getting in there trying to find people,” deputy Vanderburgh county coroner Annie Groves said. “It’s just terrible.”

Five other people were confirmed dead in neighbouring Warrick County, east of Evansville, where the Ohio River city of Newburgh was hit. No deaths were reported in Kentucky.

Indiana homeland security spokeswoman Pam Bright said about 100 of the 350 or so homes at the Evansville mobile home park were destroyed and 125 others there were damaged.

Larry and Christie Brown rode out the storm inside one mobile home.

“Man, it was more than words can say,” Larry Brown said. “We opened the door and there wasn’t anything sitting there.”

Chad Bennett, assistant fire chief in Newburgh, Indiana, told CNN that sirens sounded, but most people did not hear them because it happened in the middle of the night.

The tornado developed in a line of thunderstorms that rolled rapidly eastwards across the Ohio Valley.

Ryan Presley, a weather service meteorologist in Paducah, Kentucky, said a single tornado touched down near Smith Mills in western Kentucky, jumped the river and cut a 15 to 20-mile swathe through Indiana’s Vanderburgh and Warrick counties.

The tornado appeared to be at least an F3 on the Fujita scale, which ranges from F0, the weakest, to F5, the strongest. An F3 has winds ranging from 158 to 206mph and the tornado that hit on Sunday may hav been even stronger, Presley said.

Warrick County Sheriff Marvin Heilman said the victims included a woman who was eight months’ pregnant, her husband and a young child in the rural town of Degonia Springs, Indiana. A teenage girl was also killed near Boonville, Indiana, and her father was critically injured.

Patty Ellerbusch, 53, said she and her husband were in bed at their hilltop home in Newburgh when a relative called and warned them of the tornado. They heard a low roar and ran for the cellar.

She made it downstairs, but her husband did not. He was blasted with shattered drywall, wood and other debris as the tornado shredded the home’s roof.

“He was running down the hallway, and it knocked him down and ripped his glasses off. He said it felt like being in a wind tunnel,” she said. The storm stripped the roof off the couple’s home and destroyed their barn.

Bright said it was the deadliest tornado in Indiana since April 3, 1974, when an outbreak of several tornadoes killed 47 people and destroyed 2,069 homes.

Tornadoes can occur any time of year, but peak tornado season in the US lasts from March through the summer months, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.