US: Rescuers search for tornado victims

Crews searched today for more victims of deadly tornados that killed at least 55 people and injured hundreds more as they tore across five US states, ripping off a shopping mall roof, demolishing mobile homes and blowing apart warehouses.

It was the country’s deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years. Dozens of tornados ploughed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama.

The storms flattened streets, smashed warehouses and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber. Some looked like life-size dollhouses, their walls sheared away.

Crews going door-to-door to search for bodies had to contend with downed power lines, snapped trees and overturned cars.

“We had a beautiful neighbourhood. Now it’s hell,” said Bonnie Brawner, 80, who lives in Hartsville, Tennessee, a community about an hour from Nashville where a natural gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 400ft high.

“It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground,” said Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter.

President George Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency centre in Georgia.

“Loss of life, loss of property – prayers can help and so can the government,” Mr Bush said. “I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them.”

Thirty-one people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said. It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation’s deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985.

Students took cover in dormitory bathrooms as the storms closed in on Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. More than 20 students at the Southern Baptist school were trapped behind wreckage and jammed doors after the dormitories came down around them.

Danny Song was pinned for an hour and a half until rescuers dug him from the rubble.

“We looked up and saw the funnel coming in. We started running and then glass just exploded,” he said. “I hit the floor and a couch was shoved up against me, which may have saved my life because the roof fell on top of it.”

Forecasters had warned for days severe weather was possible. The National Weather Service issued more than 1,000 tornado warnings from 3pm on Tuesday to 6am yesterday in the 11-state area where the weather was heading.

“All the clues were there. It was just unfortunate that it came out the way it did,” Joseph Schaefer, director of the Storm Prediction Centre in Norman, Oklahoma, said.

While the weather was unusually severe, winter tornados 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.

The tornadoes could be due to La Nina, a cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can cause changes in weather patterns around the world. Recent studies have found an increase in tornadoes in parts of the US South during the winter when La Nina occurs.