History > 2011 > USA > Weather, Environment (II)

Willie Hyde holds his granddaughter,

2-year-old Sierra Goldsmith,

near where their house stood in Concord Ala.,

after a tornado ripped through parts of the town April 27.

Photograph: Jeff Roberts

Birmingham News/AP

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Tornadoes kill over 200

28 April 2011

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/tornadoes_kill_over_200.html - broken link

Government’s Disaster Response

Wins Praise

April 30, 2011
The New York Times
By KEVIN SACK
and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — It has been the deadliest natural disaster on American soil since Hurricane Katrina. But the government response to the tornadoes that devastated the South last week has, at least in the first few days, drawn little of the searing criticism aimed at federal agencies back in 2005.

In numerous interviews in the low-income Alberta neighborhood here on Friday, shortly before President Obama and other officials toured what is now an unimaginable wasteland, residents said they had few complaints about the handling of the aftermath by state, local and federal agencies.

Many expressed mild frustration about limits on their access to damaged homes, the pace of road clearing and power restoration, and traffic jams caused by roadblocks and nonfunctioning signals. But most agreed that government and charitable agencies were coping as effectively as feasible with immediate demands for shelter, food, water and medical care, along with search and rescue operations.

“It ain’t like Katrina,” said Darius Rutley, 21, whose house in Alberta was obliterated. “We’re getting help.”

Axavier Wilson, 20, who survived the storm in a closet as the rest of his house blew away, said he had been impressed that both Gov. Robert Bentley and Mr. Obama had visited right away. “I don’t think there’s much to mumble and grumble about,” he said. “Everybody feels secure about getting help.”

There was a single cry of “Help us!” on Friday from a man who watched the president’s motorcade roll through a treeless lunar landscape, but hardly the wails of stunned desperation shouted from New Orleans rooftops.

It was a very different kind of storm, of course, with different demands for response. And clearly, disaster recoveries should be judged over months, not days. But the early moments of this operation suggest that certain logistical and political lessons have been learned.

Stung by criticism that he waited 12 days to tour the Gulf Coast after last year’s BP oil spill, Mr. Obama took barely 40 hours to land in Tuscaloosa, the hardest-hit area in the eight Southern states struck by tornadoes last week. The death toll stands at 349 people; Alabama officials said that included 250 in their state, with 39 in Tuscaloosa County.

“I’ve never seen devastation like this,” Mr. Obama said after Friday’s tour. “It is heartbreaking.” “We’re going to make sure that you’re not forgotten and that we do everything we can to make sure that we rebuild,” he added.

Top federal officials, including Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, were in touch with Mr. Bentley shortly after the tornadoes landed Wednesday, according to a timeline from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA officials contacted the White House about the need for a federal emergency declaration even before Alabama had submitted a formal request that evening, said Art Faulkner, the state’s emergency management director. It was quickly granted.

Mr. Obama spoke to Mr. Bentley, a Republican, on Wednesday night and to the governors of four other affected states on Thursday. He sent the FEMA administrator, W. Craig Fugate, to Alabama on Thursday. Five members of the cabinet are expected in the state on Sunday.

“We can’t control when or where a terrible storm may strike,” Mr. Obama said Thursday afternoon, “but we can control how we respond to it.”

By late Thursday, Mr. Obama had signed the disaster declaration for Alabama, and later did the same for Georgia and Mississippi. The declarations mean the federal government will pay 75 percent of the uninsured costs of repairing public buildings, like a damaged fire station here; that residents can qualify for modest recovery grants; and that businesses can apply for low-interest loans, Mr. Fugate said in an interview.

As of Friday afternoon, FEMA had placed liaison officers in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee, according to a spokesperson.

In Alabama, as in other affected states, the White House was winning early praise from state, local and Congressional leaders of both parties.

“I like what we’re doing thus far,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, a Republican.

“They seem to be taking this very seriously,” said Representative Robert B. Aderholt, a Republican from northern Alabama. “They have been very proactive and very reactive to our requests.”

David Maxwell, the emergency management director in Arkansas, where 14 people died in storms and flooding this week, said that Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, reminded him on Friday that it had taken FEMA three weeks to deny a disaster-relief request after a 2007 tornado. “Now,” Mr. Maxwell said, “he’s singing their praises so far.”

Mr. Obama and his emergency management team have, in turn, commended the state and local response.

On Friday, Mr. Obama quoted Tuscaloosa’s Democratic mayor, Walter Maddox, as saying the destruction had brought people together. “Politics, differences of religion or race, all that fades away when we are confronted with the awesome power of nature,” Mr. Obama said. “And we’re reminded that all we have is each other.”

That said, the Obama administration has taken pains to emphasize that state and local officials are in charge of the recovery efforts, with FEMA playing, in Mr. Fugate’s words, “a support role.”

Mr. Fugate said that was not a pre-emptive effort to deflect blame. Rather, he said, FEMA should take the lead only if state and local governments are overwhelmed or incapacitated.

“It’s inappropriate, I think, for people in Washington to take over what is a primary state response,” said Mr. Fugate, who served as Florida’s emergency management director for eight years and said he sometimes resented federal intervention.

Placing the federal government in charge “is seductively easy if it’s only one disaster,” he said. “But we’ve had multiple states hit. If you only had one organization try to respond to all that, we’d have probably missed areas.”

State and local leaders have not complained that the task of recovery, however big, is beyond their management. But with Alabama facing serious budget shortfalls, Mr. Bentley and Mr. Maddox made it clear that they would quickly require hundreds of millions of dollars in federal reconstruction aid.

Asked what his city most needed from the federal government, Mr. Maddox answered in one word. “Revenue.”

Kevin Sack reported from Tuscaloosa,

and Timothy Williams from New York.

Government’s Disaster Response Wins Praise,
NYT,
30.4.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/us/01fema.html

Court clears way

for levee to be blown up

CHICAGO | Sat Apr 30, 2011
2:16pm EDT
Reuters
By Christine Stebbins

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal appeals court cleared the way for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with plans to blow up a Mississippi River levee to control flooding, a government official said on Saturday.

"They denied the motion by the state of Missouri so we have permission to move forward if we need to," said Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Mississippi Valley District.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Saturday that the Corps had the right to breach the levee to prevent flooding in Cairo, Illinois, as permitted by a 1928 law.

The state of Missouri originally sued to stop the Corps plan, arguing that blowing up the levee would flood 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland and do extensive damage. The states of Illinois and Kentucky took the other side, saying that towns in their states could be flooded if the levee is not blown up.

A lower court ruled against Missouri on Friday, and the state then petitioned to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I'm pleased that the court quickly rejected Missouri's request. The Army Corps must have the ability to take any action necessary to protect lives and homes in Cairo and the surrounding communities," Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said in a statement.

Cairo Mayor Judson Childs said the city is doing a voluntary evacuation.

"Right now I am at a standstill -- there is not a mandated evacuation. That could change minute to minute," he said.

Cairo, an historic town of 2,800 people, is at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Both rivers have been rising as a result of days of rain and the melt and runoff of the winter's heavy snow storms.

The Corps is reviewing the site on Saturday and plans to decide this weekend whether to blow up the Birds Point levee, depending on the level of water in the river. It will detonate explosives in the levee if the river at Cairo reaches 61 feet and is rising.

The river was a 59.2 feet on Saturday morning, forecast to rise to 60.5 feet by May 3, according to the National Weather Service.

"We are still in a holding pattern looking at current river levels," said Anderson, adding that the Corps could potentially blow the levee even if the river does not reach 61 feet.

It could be beneficial to detonate it before the water gets to 61 because the levee is under the same stress at the current level of the water, he said.

(Reporting by Christine Stebbins,

Editing by Greg McCune)

    Court clears way for levee to be blown up, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-weather-floods-missouri-idUSTRE73S3GH20110430

Tornadoes toll rises over 350

with thousands homeless

PLEASANT GROVE, Alabama
Sat Apr 30, 2011
1:47pm EDT
By Verna Gates

PLEASANT GROVE, Alabama (Reuters) - The death toll from the second deadliest tornado outbreak on record rose above 350 on Saturday as thousands of stunned survivors camped out in the shattered shells of their homes or moved into shelters or with friends.

With some estimates putting the number of homes and buildings destroyed close to 10,000, state and federal authorities in the U.S. South were still coming to terms with the scale of the devastation from the country's worst natural catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

One disaster risk modeler, EQECAT, is forecasting insured property losses of between $2 billion and $5 billion from the havoc inflicted by the swarm of violent twisters that gouged through seven southern states this week.

The death toll in Alabama, the hardest-hit state, rose to 255 on Saturday, with at least 101 more deaths reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana.

"We're in the thousands of homes completely gone ... It's not an exaggeration to say that whole communities were wiped out," Yasamie August, spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters.

In many communities in the U.S. South, the scenes of destruction with tangled piles of rubble, timber, vehicles and personal possessions recalled the devastation seen in the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

Power and water were still out in many areas.

"It is like living in some other world. Devastation is everywhere," said Pastor John Gates of the United Methodist Church in Pleasant Grove, a community with a population of some 10,000 west of Birmingham, Alabama.

The death toll from the week's tornado outbreak, which is still expected to rise, was the second highest inflicted by this kind of weather phenomenon in U.S. history. In March 1925, 747 people were killed after tornadoes hit the U.S. Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.

President Obama, mindful of criticism that President George W. Bush was too slow to respond to the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, visited the wrecked city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Friday to pledge full federal assistance for the states hit.

NEIGHBORHOODS "LAID FLAT"

Some of the twisters -- the winds of one in Smithville, Mississippi, was recorded reaching 205 miles per hour -- picked up people and cars and hurled them through the air.

Rescuers were still searching for bodies and those unaccounted for. But the total of missing was not clear.

Many whose homes only lost roofs and windows were camping inside with tarps and plastic sheeting over them, but those whose houses were completely razed were forced to move in with family or friends or go into government shelters.

"Most people are living in the parts of their houses that are still standing. But for some people, you can't even tell where their houses were. They are with family, friends or in hotels," said Gates, 63.

"We still have missing people to find," he added.

There were 659 people in shelters across Alabama, August said. Tennessee had 233 people in shelters.

As state and federal authorities increased efforts to clear rubble and provide food and water to homeless survivors, volunteers in many local communities also turned out to help the most affected.

"There's lots of commotion with big trucks coming in and the sound of chainsaws. Big grills are set up everywhere to offer people food. The community has really pulled together, said Tammy Straate, 29, a foster mother in Pleasant Grove who cares for 11 children ages 5-16.

"For blocks and blocks, everything is just laid flat," Straate added. "Our little community will never be the same. Some people say they are just not going to rebuild."

Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating.

Recovery could cost billions of dollars and even with federal disaster aid it could complicate efforts by affected states to bounce back from recession.

The tornadoes mauled Alabama's poultry industry -- the state is the No. 3 U.S. chicken producer -- halted a coal mine and hurt other manufacturers across the state.

The second-biggest U.S. nuclear power plant, the Browns Ferry facility in Alabama, may be down for weeks after its power was knocked out and the plant automatically shut, avoiding a nuclear disaster, officials said.

 

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg, Peggy Gargis in Birmingham, Pascal Fletcher in Miami,
Writing by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Eric Beech)

    Tornadoes toll rises over 350 with thousands homeless, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-usa-weather-idUSTRE73S3Q320110430

Factbox:

Dodging the "death tube"

- tornado survival tips

Sat Apr 30, 2011
7:29am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Some survivors of the tornadoes that killed more than 300 people in the southern United States this week narrowly escaped by seeking shelter in basements, closets and bathtubs -- and even in a freezer and a tanning bed.

Here are some safety tips from experts on what to do if a violent twister, dubbed "death tubes" by some, heads your way:

* If you are at home, find a reinforced, windowless area like an interior bathroom, closet, crawl space or hallway. Basements also provide good refuge, but stay away from outside walls. Try to crouch under the stairs or a heavy duty table to avoid falling debris.

* Be sure to protect your head and neck. "Put on a bicycle helmet or a football helmet," said Harold Brooks, a research meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If you're in a bathtub, another option is to cover up with pillows, sofa cushions or a mattress.

* Do not open your windows, and stay away from them.

* If you are in a car in an urban area, don't try to outrun a tornado, the Federal Emergency Management Agency advises. If possible, seek shelter in a building. If you're outdoors with no nearby shelter, lie flat in a ditch or a depression. Cover your head with your hands. "Don't stay in your car and don't park it under an overpass," said Brooks.

* Stay away from trees and cars if you are outside.

* Avoid shopping malls, theaters and gymnasiums where the roof might only be supported by walls, the Harvard Medical School warns. "If there is no time to leave, get under a door frame or something else that could deflect falling debris," it advises.

(Reporting by Kevin Gray; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Laura MacInnis)

    Factbox: Dodging the "death tube" - tornado survival tips, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-usa-weather-safety-factbox-idUSTRE73S7BU20110430

Factbox:

Financial picture

for states hit by storms

Sat Apr 30, 2011
7:29am EDT
Reuters

(Reuters) - Storms that killed 328 people in the South will complicate efforts by states and municipalities to recover from years of budget crises but federal assistance should blunt the disaster's economic impact.

Following are U.S. states affected by the tornadoes and storms with detail of the economic challenges they face:

 

ALABAMA - (228 dead in storms)

Alabama is struggling to balance its $19 billion budget in the face of falling revenues. It announced last month it may have to lay off 1,000 state employees because it must wipe out a shortfall of more than $900 million in its budget for the fiscal year starting this summer.

The state was also hit by the BP Gulf oil spill last year, which hurt tourism and fishing. Its jobless rate has been easing of late, falling to 9.2 percent in March.

Alabama's economy is expected to grow by more than 3 percent in 2011 after expanding slightly more than 2 percent in 2010.

 

TENNESSEE (34 dead in storms)

Tennessee has a low debt level, which has garnered it top credit ratings by two of the three major rating agencies, and Fitch Ratings expects the state budget to return to stability over the next year.

However, the state's estimated per capita income ranked 38th out of 50 states in 2009 and unemployment is high. In March, the unemployment rate was 9.5 percent. Tennessee's economy relies heavily on manufacturing.

 

MISSISSIPPI (33 dead in storms)

The state faces long-term high unemployment rates and a workforce with low education levels. It took a blow to its economy from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a year ago. For the fiscal year starting this summer, it will have to close a budget gap of $634 million.

In 2009, the last year data is available, Mississippi residents earned the lowest median income in the United States, of $36,646. The national median income stands at $50,221.

A report in January from Moody's Investors Services found that Mississippi's combination of $10.3 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and $4.4 billion in tax-supported debt represented 15.9 percent of the state's GDP, the second highest rate in the nation and an indicator that it has steep long-term financial burdens.

The states' tax revenues have begun improving but Governor Haley Barbour says he expects recovery to be slow.

 

GEORGIA (15 dead in storms)

The state's revenues are heading to recovery, increasing 9.4 percent this year from last. But Georgia must close a budget gap of more than $1 billion for the fiscal year starting this summer.

Georgia's jobless rate has dropped in the past few months but remains high at 10 percent. The state, with a population of around 10 million, is trying to recover from the recession when its economy contracted 3.1 percent.

Even after the recession ended, the state's personal income per capita is below the national rate.

 

ARKANSAS (11 dead in storms)

Like almost all states, Arkansas saw its revenues collapse during the 2007-2009 recession but it expects its income to return to pre-recession peaks in the budget year that starts this summer. Its employment conditions are improving as well, with its jobless rate currently at 7.8 percent.

(Compiled by Lisa Lambert and Matthew Bigg, editing by Andrew Hay)

    Factbox: Financial picture for states hit by storms, R, 30.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/30/us-usa-weather-states-idUSTRE73S7CD20110430

Storms’ Toll Rises

as Scale of Damage Becomes Clear

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and KIM SEVERSON

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — On Friday, as President Obama came to this partly ruined city to witness the destruction wrought by this week’s monstrous storms, the full scope of the damage was becoming more apparent.

The death toll, including those who were killed by storms earlier in the week in Arkansas, reached 333. On Friday evening, Alabama emergency officials announced that the state’s death toll had reached 232.

Power remained out for hundreds of thousands throughout the South, rendering gas stations, grocery stores and banks useless. Fifteen hundred people were staying in more than 65 Red Cross shelters, a fraction of those who were left homeless but an indication of the numbers who are now destitute.

So far in Alabama, 654 families have been displaced from public or government-assisted housing units, according to an initial count by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Red Cross, with an eye toward the mental health issues that will surely develop in the hard days and weeks ahead, has dispatched hundreds of volunteers trained to offer psychological first aid.

Mr. Obama, who visited Tuscaloosa with his wife, Michelle, gave a sense of the scale of the disaster after a ride through Alberta, a neighborhood that was turned into a jagged wasteland.

“I’ve never seen devastation like this,” he said.

But, echoing the volunteers who have come in such high numbers that they are being turned away in some areas, Mr. Obama turned the focus toward the work ahead.

“We can’t bring those who have been lost back,” he said. “But the property damage, which is obviously extensive, that’s something that we can do something about.”

The White House announced on Friday afternoon that five cabinet members, including the secretaries of agriculture, housing and homeland security, would be traveling to Alabama and Mississippi on Sunday.

Mr. Obama declared a major disaster in Alabama on Thursday night, an action that makes federal financing available for individuals, businesses and state and local governments.

This federal money is mainly intended to cover uninsured losses, and can help individuals obtain some rebuilding assistance and cities replace public buildings. Insurance claims are already growing exponentially, and could approach $1 billion, said Ragan Ingram, chief of staff at the Alabama Department of Insurance.

Meanwhile, emergency workers in the hardest-hit states of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were toiling on urgent needs, some of them almost cruel in their complexity.

“Now we’re getting a handle on exactly what we are facing,” said Mayor Walt Maddox of Tuscaloosa, “the nightmarish truth that this is an utter disaster.”

The tornado damaged two water tanks in Tuscaloosa, necessitating a boil-water advisory in much of the city — including parts of it that do not have electricity. The emergency operations centers in three of the affected counties have no power; in two of those there is no telephone service either. The countywide 911 system in Walker County is also down, according to the Alabama Emergency Management Agency. About 1,000 workers were trying to restore electricity to nearly 260,000 customers of Alabama Power.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s electricity production system, which sells to seven states, lost more than 200 towers and other structures to the storm and left nearly 700,000 customers without power across several states. By the afternoon, power was again running through high-voltage lines that stretch across 21 of the damaged towers, but 561,000 customers were still without electricity. It will likely not be restored until next week, and the company is facing weeks of work and millions in repair costs.

“This is a historic outage,” said Scott Brooks, a spokesman.

It is too early to calculate the storm’s economic impact, with some employers, like auto plants, temporarily closed and some small businesses blown away altogether. But one indication of the scale of destruction, as well as the complicated challenges of the response, is Alabama’s $5 billion poultry industry.

The industry, which is mostly located in the northern counties that were hit hardest, processes 20 million broiler chickens a week. At least 714 poultry houses — each of which can hold up to 30,000 chickens — have been damaged or destroyed.

Millions more chickens might be without water for extended periods and were seen as likely to die. Those in damaged facilities will have to be destroyed and disposed of according to state law, which allows for burying or burning carcasses.

That alone will be a challenge, said John McMillan, the state agriculture commissioner.

“Nobody’s got an incinerator big enough to take care of 20,000 or 30,000 of them at one time, and that’s what we will have in many, many cases,” Mr. McMillan said.

In Tuscaloosa, officials said on Friday that the police had received 454 calls since the tornado struck from residents looking for missing people. Officials cautioned not to read too much into that number, but it did suggest that there may still be grim discoveries to be made.

Early in the morning two teams from the Tuscaloosa Fire Department set out with “human remains detection” dogs to scour areas of the city that were hit hardest: the housing projects at Rosedale Court and the largely poor neighborhood of Alberta, both of which were flattened by the enormous tornado that rolled northeastward through town.

They were search and rescue teams but held few illusions about what they were looking for — the dogs that specialize in finding survivors were not the ones the city sought.

The team in Alberta waited patiently as a white Labrador retriever named Jody from North Mississippi Search and Rescue sniffed around the giant piles of debris. She indicated interest, as the term of art puts it, in three places, and a worker began using an excavator to lift up fallen trees, walls and mounds of jumbled debris.

For hours, searchers did not find anything. But given the thoroughness of the devastation, it seemed inevitable that the team would find at least one body. And indeed, at around 5:30 p.m., in another part of Alberta, they did.

Campbell Robertson reported from Tuscaloosa,
and Kim Severson from Atlanta. Kevin Sack
and Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Tuscaloosa.

    Storms’ Toll Rises as Scale of Damage Becomes Clear, NYT, 29.4.2011,   
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30storm.html

What the Wind Carried Away

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By JAMES BRAZIEL

Birmingham, Ala.

DEBRIS is everywhere in Birmingham. Tar paper, insulation, gnarled bits of metal, crumpled siding, plastic, splintered wood — some brought by the wind all the way from Tuscaloosa, 60 miles southwest of here.

My real estate agent, who is in Oneonta, a town northeast of Birmingham, found homework papers in his yard from a schoolhouse near Tuscaloosa.

We’re 100 miles from there, he told me.

When I think of tornadoes, I think of the winds, how ruthlessly they break apart our homes, get at what’s inside, what we touch and think we have hold of, scattering it across the sky, 60 miles, 100 miles, until it floats down like harmless snow, rain, shooting stars unrecognizable to the ones who find it.

It’s been a hard spring here, despite the beauty of the flowering landscape. Every few days cool and warm fronts come together, dance around each other until they swirl and spawn tornadoes. Wednesday morning we could already tell it would happen again, and all day we waited to see if we would be hit.

Schools were closed and around us, the wind rushed, then dropped, pulling the air out of our lungs to make a storm somewhere. The weather reports told us the tornadoes would appear at any moment out of Mississippi. Then we heard there was a tornado in Tuscaloosa, a mile wide and headed straight for downtown Birmingham.

I live in a suburb on the south side of Birmingham called Homewood, and while I waited to hear more I sat on my apartment porch watching debris fall into the swimming pool in the courtyard. Other people would go out on their porches, stare at the sky until the lightning started striking blue and purple. Then they’d hurry back in.

We all had our TVs on. One of the weathermen was following the storm up Interstate 59 toward us. No thin funnel this time; instead, it looked as if the whole sky had simply sunk to the earth. Watching breaking local news on TV has a surreal, calming effect, as if you’re watching a movie that must be happening far away, recorded at an earlier time, no matter what the weather outside tells you.

The twister veered just north, clipping Birmingham and sparing most of us. Unless you happened to be in the leafy old working-class neighborhood of Pratt City, off Interstate 59, last hit by a twister in 1998. In Pratt City, those mighty trees that have held against so much else finally broke. Some are entangled in power lines. Some crashed through roofs; some are angled precariously on rooftops like broken arms.

After the storm I drove up to Pratt City. Everyone is out — the neighbors, the police, the Red Cross, firemen, people from all over the city — walking around, looking at the unbelievable damage. Whole buildings gone. One entire neighborhood off Avenue W gone.

Around us are piles of wood and so much wire — thick cables draped over dented cars, wrapped into lassos on street corners. We see tar paper trapped in chain-link fences, smell gas seeping from broken pipes. Tin and plastic hang on to the last ends of branches of fallen oaks and sycamores, full of paper but stripped of leaves.

A girl lies atop a set of bureau drawers in the center of the rubble. She fidgets, tries to sleep, telling us that even in all this destruction, some things are left whole.

But this one house, you can see clear through it: all the glass gone from the windows in front, and the front door open, creaking a little, the back of a sofa with clothes slung over, and beyond the sofa, the far wall ripped clean off, leaving a view of hills and the broken roofs of other houses.

Willie Carter lived through it. He said he was in his hallway, looked outside and saw white, then started running to the back. A loud rumble followed him. Then all the windows in his house popped one after another, and he dived for his iron bathtub. It started moving, scraping across the floor.

If that bathtub had gone up in the air, he said, he would’ve jumped out. But it didn’t. Somehow the tub wound up outside as the walls fell apart, and there he stayed, cocooned, until it all passed. His house is gone now, leaving him as testament. As soon as he could, he squeezed out from the boards around him and went to help others. And helping others is what it’s all about now.

Tornadoes are all luck or all fate, depending on what you believe. And it’s hard to walk into this beautiful sunshine, the wind bringing cool air that keeps the mugginess away, knowing so many people are hurting, that hundreds have died. A student of mine, Ashley Jones, said tornadoes seem like a distant myth, and she’s lived here all her life. And if you were not in Pratt City, if you did not see where all the debris had come from, you would be left with only those tiniest of pieces, wondering what happened and how fast and how far, if next time it would be something of yours.

 

James Braziel, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is the author of the novel “Snakeskin Road.”

    What the Wind Carried Away, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/opinion/30Braziel.html

After the Storm,

Walking Amid the Ruins

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — There are things you can see all over town this week that you should not be able to see.

You should not be able to see Coleman Coliseum if you are standing in the parking lot of University Mall. You should not be able to see in someone’s bathroom from the street, see their family photos on the living room wall or the doll hanging in someone’s bedroom amid the vast wasteland that used to be the neighborhood of Alberta City.

Then there is what you cannot see, and that is what brought the men of the Tuscaloosa Fire Department to Alberta City on Friday morning, along with several volunteers and a white Labrador retriever named Jody.

As of Thursday night, there was only one person officially unaccounted for in Tuscaloosa, where fierce tornadoes left dozens of people dead. But Alberta City was a poor part of town, many of its apartments populated by Hispanic men quietly following work around the South. No one fully knew who was here before, much less who was not here now.

Jody is a “human remains detection” dog, said her handler, Randy Hobson of North Mississippi Search and Rescue. She has no interest, he said, in finding people who are still alive.

As Jody and Mr. Hobson climbed up and down the piles, the other men watched in silence or poked around in the wreckage.

It was quiet, but for the birds and the rustling made by a solitary man who was climbing over a mangled Nissan into the backdoor of his apartment at Chateau Deauville, until recently a two-story apartment complex. He climbed out with an armful of clothes.

The firefighters pointed out the remains of the house where the three bodies were found the day before, the heap of planks where the man was seen by neighbors before the storm and never seen again.

Wesley Hurst, a 22-year-old volunteer and Marine who is to begin a deployment to the Middle East next week, found a frightened dachshund amid the ruins. It did not want to be set down, even to drink water, so Mr. Hurst held on to it.

Black cars rolled down the street, surveying the scene in advance of the president’s motorcade, which would come racing by shortly.

Then Jody barked.

    After the Storm, Walking Amid the Ruins, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30tuscaloosa.html

In Mississippi,

Little Town Is Staggered

by a Tornado’s Direct Hit

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

SMITHVILLE, Miss. — When Darwin Hathcock, the police chief, saw the funnel cloud beyond the tree line just a couple of miles away, he knew that his town would not be spared.

He called in the cloud sighting and phoned the mayor, who was at the town hall with two employees, and then hurried to the tiny police station. With the storm just 30 seconds away, he yelled for people to come inside and sent them to the sturdiest room. Mr. Hathcock, 48, and his 24-year-old son, Joshua, were hunched in a bathroom when the tornado arrived. Their ears felt close to bursting. They could not breathe. And then they hurtled through the air, holding each other, and landed 30 feet from the police station, battered, bloody but mostly intact, the doorknob still in Joshua’s hand.

“There was no doubt in my mind that we were all going to die,” Mr. Hathcock said. “It’s just the way the Lord done it. You can’t question the Lord. He don’t make mistakes.”

Smithville, a spot of a town of about 1,000 where first names suffice and Bibles lie within reach, endured a direct hit from Wednesday’s tornado in Mississippi. So far, 14 people have been declared dead, including several children, and 23 others are missing. Crews were still searching for bodies behind the town’s school.

Fed by a nearby waterway, the tornado churned right along the main street, Highway 25, chewing up houses and businesses, and shaking up the town like a child with a snow globe. Three-quarters of the town is gone. Half of the houses were demolished — splintered to bits or sunk in — and a quarter were badly damaged. One-hundred-year-old oak trees toppled in seconds.

Mel’s Diner, where people settle in for a slice of homemade cake, is a pile of rubble. Customers survived by cowering in the last thing left standing, the walk-in cooler. A large storage shed flew in on the funnel cloud and landed next door.

Fourteen of the town’s other businesses also collapsed; only two survived mostly in one piece, a gas station and an appliance shop. The police station, the town hall, the post office, four of six churches: None of them were left standing.

“We crawled our way out of the building,” said Mayor Gregg Kennedy, 49. “Then I bent over and I cried like a baby. It’s the only thing at that time I could do.”

Nearby towns have jumped in to help, setting up shelters, serving hamburgers, sending in clothes. The Red Cross is here, as are other emergency services. Gov. Haley Barbour stopped by Smithville, which is in the northeast corner of the state, to offer assurances that more help was on the way. The governor said he had rarely seen such destruction and mentioned that the casualty count might still rise.

“We know there is a tremendous amount of debris, and the possibility that the waterways surrounding this area contain human remains,” Mr. Barbour said. “We are hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.”

Most residents have moved in with relatives and friends in other towns. On Friday, some returned to their homes to salvage what they could, but many did not know where to start or what to pick up first: a shattered picture frame with a wedding photo, an artificial flower arrangement, a dirty pink teddy bear.

But they had little trouble making peace with the tornado’s path.

“We are supposed to learn something from it,” said Mary Ann Nabors, as she swept the porch of her antique store, the Pink Flamingo, in a building that had been in her family for generations and was once a general store. It was considered “the Wal-Mart of Smithville,” she said. “Hardship happens to you. I did not know that all my life. When God sends you hardship, he is not taking something away. He is giving you something better.”

As some of them looked around, it was hard not to think about the immediate aftermath. The tornado stripped a few people of their clothes and covered them in mud. Ruth Estis, who was blind and elderly, was pried from the arms of her husband, Roy Lee Estis, and carried away. She died. Mr. Estis died that evening when his heart gave out. The Cox family lost its father, Jessie, to the tornado, while directly next door his son’s house sat untouched, one of the few.

As the storm neared, C. J. Thompson, a junior in high school, had huddled with his family in the hallway of his house. His mother, just out of the shower, was covered in a quilt. His best friend held the 2-year-old. The exchange student from Belgium who was living with the family was in the corner.

“Pray, pray, pray!” shouted his mother, Marcie Pearce, as the tornado hit the house. She recalled: “I felt it sucking me in, and stuff was hitting me in the back of the head.”

Nobody in the house was badly hurt. But just paces away, neighbors could not hold on. Making his way out of the rubble immediately after the storm, C. J. found two of them dead. Around the back of the house, he saw two small children, babies, he said. He took off his two T-shirts and draped them over their bodies. His girlfriend he found unscathed in her bathtub.

Up the street, Caroline Boyd, 66, saw the funnel cloud from her window and ran to her hallway. The storm sucked her into her den. It lifted up her house, turned it like a spinning coin and then set it down again several feet from the foundation. An oak tree fell next to it and anchored the house, keeping the wind from hauling Mrs. Boyd and her home away.

“I felt the house swirling around,” she said. “Then it was gone.”

“I have been through cancer four times,” she said. “It just wasn’t my time to go. But this house and that house yonder were not so lucky. There was death on either side of me.”

    In Mississippi, Little Town Is Staggered by a Tornado’s Direct Hit, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30smithville.html

Tornado Puts an End

to a University’s School Year

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By ROBBIE BROWN

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — From the crimson flags in store windows to the hotels that swell on football weekends, this city lives and breathes the University of Alabama. So when a tornado tore through Tuscaloosa this week — killing at least 36 and leaving hundreds homeless a few miles from campus — shock replaced the excitement that was building for graduation.

On Thursday, the university called off the rest of this school year — canceling final exams and the last week of classes, and postponing graduation until August. Although the storm spared the campus itself, the 30,000 students and 5,000 faculty members and staff at the state’s flagship university have felt the toll deeply.

Three students have been confirmed dead. At least 80 employees are missing, said officials at Aramark, the campus food service provider. Dozens of homes rented by students have been demolished. And displaced residents are now living on air mattresses in the gymnasium.

“It’s impossible for something to affect Tuscaloosa without affecting the university,” said Kelsey Stein, 21, a Spanish and journalism major who has been writing about the storm for the student newspaper, The Crimson White. “It didn’t cause any structural damage, but it made up for that in emotional impact.”

Tuscaloosa, a city of 93,000, suffered the highest death toll in Wednesday’s storms. President Obama toured the devastated area on Friday, a few miles east of campus.

Ashkan Bayatpour, 26, a marketing graduate student, was inside his off-campus house when the tornado struck. His roof collapsed. Trees crushed the rubble. “I’ve been through Iraq. I’ve been through Katrina,” Mr. Bayatpour, a former Navy enlisted man, said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The administration is advising students to leave campus as soon as possible. Power returned on Friday morning, but water is still not safe to drink. If students want to take exams, they can reschedule them with professors. Otherwise, their grades will stay the same.

For seniors planning to graduate on May 7, the cancellation has been sudden and jarring. They are scrambling to tell friends and family to cancel flight reservations. “The end of my whole educational career just got blown away,” said David Kumbroch, 21, a telecommunications and film major, who has no place to live until power returns in Huntsville, Ala., where he was planning to move. “At the end of this, everybody will know somebody who lost their lives or lost everything else.”

On Friday, Laura Jones, 21, a math education major, was packing up clothes, photographs and her computer, and preparing to move out of her sorority house. Instead of attending end-of-the-year parties, she is helping to raise money to donate to victims, and moving back in with her parents. Across campus, students are accepting donated clothes, food and bottled water.

The university had no choice but to cancel the school year, said Cathy Andreen, a university spokeswoman. “The city infrastructure really couldn’t even support all of the students being here,” she said.

The student newspaper has been using Twitter and Facebook to report information about missing or dead students. For most students, the primary concern is tracking down classmates, Ms. Stein said.

“It would be selfish of people to worry about not graduating or not having end-of-the-year parties, when other people are digging through the rubble of their homes,” she said. “The university is the people, not the buildings.”

    Tornado Puts an End to a University’s School Year, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30campus.html

Memories Lost to a Whirlwind

Alight on Facebook to Be Claimed

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By AMY HARMON

The tornado that killed Emily Washburn’s grandfather this week also destroyed his Mississippi home, leaving his family with nothing to remember him by — until a picture of him holding the dog he loved surfaced on Facebook, posted by a woman who found it in her office parking lot, 175 miles away in Tennessee.

Like hundreds of others finding keepsakes that fell from the sky and posting photographs of them on a Facebook lost and found, the woman included her e-mail address, and Ms. Washburn wrote immediately: “That man is my granddaddy. It would mean a lot to me to have that picture.”

Created by Patty Bullion, 37, of Lester, Ala., a page on the social networking site has so far reunited dozens of storm survivors with their prized — and in some cases, only — possessions: a high school diploma that landed in a Lester front yard was traced to its owner in Tupelo, Miss., for example. A woman who lost her home in the tiny town of Phil Campbell, Ala., claimed her homemade quilt found in Athens, Ala., nearly 50 miles away: “Phil Campbell Class of 2000,” it read.

But the page is also turning social networking software designed to help friends stay in touch into an unexpected meeting ground for strangers. Along with the photographs of found items are the comments of well-wishers and homespun detectives speculating as to the identities of their owners. For those spared by the storms that killed hundreds in the South, the page is a bridge to its victims, a way to offer solace and to share in their suffering.

“Is she okay?” wrote one commenter on a snapshot of a red-haired child at a swimming pool. “I see her face throughout the day, and wonder.”

The tornado did not touch down in Lester. But when Ms. Bullion ventured into her yard on Wednesday afternoon, she found it littered with other people’s memories that the storm had disgorged in passing. One document, lying face down on the wet pavement, was a sonogram, just like those she had saved from her own pregnancies. “I would want that back,” she said.

Ms. Bullion already had her own Facebook page with a few hundred friends, but the chances of any of them knowing the people whose items she had found were slim, she thought. So she created a new page with a title that described precisely what she hoped it would contain: “Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes.” She asked her friends to post a link to it on their own pages.

“I feel like I know these people,” Ms. Bullion said. “They could so easily have been us.”

The first of the images that Ms. Bullion had posted was identified a few hours later by the sister of two children shown in a black-and-white photograph. They were from Hackleburg, Ala., the sister wrote in the comments section, a town almost 100 miles away: Ms. Bullion’s husband, a forest ranger, looked it up on a map.

By Friday evening, more than 52,000 people had clicked the “like” button on the page, and more than 600 pictures had been posted: an unopened letter, a death certificate and scores of photographs. Some of the items were unscathed. Some were carefully pieced together by their finder. Some, like mortgage statements and canceled checks, evoked calls to be sure to block out account numbers and personal financial information.

One water-damaged picture of a chubby-cheeked toddler elicited over two dozen comments, its rips and smudges an unavoidable metaphor for what people feared had happened to the child. “This breaks my heart,” wrote one commenter. A digitally restored version someone posted yielded approving comments, almost as though saving the picture could ensure the child’s safety.

Laura Mashburn saw some sign of providence in the fact that Hannah Wilson, the young woman whose photo she had found on her doorstep in Lester, turned out to work in a dentist’s office, just as she once had.

The woman’s co-workers saw the image of what looked to be her old prom picture on the page and supplied her name and address. Her mother, someone else volunteered, had a heart attack during the storm. “I saw Hannah yesterday,” wrote another friend, “and she is grateful to you for getting this back to her.”

Laura Monks, the director of a community college in Fayetteville, Tenn., who had found the picture of Ms. Washburn’s grandfather, Elvin Patterson, and his dog Yoyo, said she would return it right away.

“My great-grandfather’s name was Elvin also,” she wrote to Ms. Washburn in an e-mail. “Is there anything that I can do for your family or your community?”

Ms. Washburn, 31, whose maternal grandmother also died in the storm, said in an interview on Friday that she would frame the photograph. Then she said, her voice breaking, “I’ll probably give it to my mom.”

    Memories Lost to a Whirlwind Alight on Facebook to Be Claimed, R, 29.4.2011
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30reunite.html

Obama promises help

to rebuild tornado-hit South

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama | Fri Apr 29, 2011
3:38pm EDT
Reuters
By Verna Gates and Alister Bull

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - President Barack Obama promised federal aid on Friday to the tornado-ravaged South after he got a close-up look at the "heartbreaking" impact of deadly twisters that killed at least 310 people.

"We are going to do everything we can to help these communities rebuild," Obama told reporters after touring scores of smashed homes and talking with survivors in Tuscaloosa, a university city in Alabama that was wrecked by the tornadoes.

Alabama was the hardest hit of seven southern states that were blasted this week by a swarm of tornadoes and violent storms that flattened whole neighborhoods. It was the deadliest U.S. natural catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"I have never seen devastation like this. It is heartbreaking," said Obama, accompanied by his wife Michelle Obama and Alabama Governor Robert Bentley. "This is something I don't think anyone has seen before."

In Alabama alone, 210 people lost their lives and 1,700 were injured, Bentley said.

"We can't bring those who've been lost back. They're alongside God at this point ... but the property damage, which is obviously extensive, that's something we can do something about," Obama said.

The president was eager to show that federal relief is on its way and that he is not taking the disaster lightly. His predecessor President George W. Bush was fiercely criticized for what was viewed as a slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Flying into Tuscaloosa aboard Air Force One, Obama and his family saw a wide brown scar of devastation several miles (kilometers) long and hundreds of yards (meters) wide.

Obama and his family flew on to Cape Canaveral in Florida where they had been due to witness the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavour, but the launch was postponed due to a technical problem.

Tuscaloosa resident Jack Fagan, 23, was glad that Obama saw the damage. "Perhaps federal funds will help us, but I'm sure it will take longer than they say because it always does."

Recovery could cost billions of dollars and even with federal disaster aid it could complicate efforts by affected states to bounce back from recession. It will place an added burden on municipalities grappling with fragile finances.

Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating. Deaths also were reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana.

 

NUCLEAR PLANT SHUT, INDUSTRIES DAMAGED

The tornadoes battered Alabama's poultry industry -- the state is the No. 3 U.S. chicken producer -- and other manufacturers in the state.

It halted coal production at the Cliffs Natural Resources mine in Alabama.

The second-biggest U.S. nuclear power plant, the Browns Ferry facility in Alabama, may be down for weeks after its power was knocked out and the plant automatically shut, avoiding a nuclear disaster, officials said.

Apparel producer VF Corp, owner of clothing brands such as North Face and Wrangler Jeans, said one of its jeanswear distribution centers, located in Hackleburg, Alabama, was destroyed and an employee killed.

In Tuscaloosa, the twisters, including one a mile-wide, cut a path of destruction, reducing houses to rubble, flipping cars and knocking out power and other utilities.

"We are bringing in the cadaver dogs today," said Heather McCollum, assistant to the mayor of Tuscaloosa. She put the death toll in the city at 42 but said it could rise.

Of the more than 150 tornadoes that rampaged from west to east across the South this week, the National Weather Service confirmed that one that struck Smithville in Mississippi's Monroe County on Wednesday was a rare EF-5 tornado, with winds reaching 205 miles per hour.

This is the highest rating on the Enhanced Fujita scale that measures tornado intensity.

"The homes here are made well ... but when you are talking about a direct hit, it does not matter. ... Right now, those homes are slabs of concrete. There is nothing left," Monroe County Sheriff Andy Hood said.

Across the South, many were made homeless by the tornadoes and stayed in shelters. Other residents provided food, water and supplies to neighbors whose homes were destroyed.

Tuscaloosa resident Antonio Donald, 50, received help. "I got no light, no water. I have a newborn baby at home, a daughter who is pregnant and an 88-year-old aunt," he said.

The storms left up to 1 million homes in Alabama without power. Water and garbage collection services were also disrupted in some areas.

Alabama's Jefferson County, which is fighting to avoid what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, suffered damage and 19 dead but said the storms would have little direct impact on its struggling finances because federal grants were expected.

(Additional reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham and Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg, Leigh Coleman in Mississippi, Phil Wahba in New York; writing by Matthew Bigg and Pascal Fletcher, Editing by Will Dunham)

    Obama promises help to rebuild tornado-hit South, R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-usa-weather-idUSTRE73S3Q320110429

Tornadoes tear across South,

killing over 306

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama | Fri Apr 29, 2011
10:01am EDT
Reuters
By Verna Gates

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Tornadoes and violent storms tore through seven Southern states, killing at least 306 people and causing billions of dollars of damage in one of the deadliest swarm of twisters in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama described the loss of life as "heartbreaking" and called the damage to homes and businesses "nothing short of catastrophic." He promised strong federal support for rebuilding and plans to view the damage on Friday.

Over several days this week, the powerful tornadoes -- more than 160 reported in total -- combined with storms to cut a swath of destruction heading west to east. It was the worst U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed up to 1,800 people.

In some areas, whole neighborhoods were flattened, cars flipped over and trees and power lines felled, leaving tangled wreckage.

While rescue officials searched for survivors, some who sheltered in bathtubs, closets and basements told of miraculous escapes. "I made it. I got in a closet, put a pillow over my face and held on for dear life because it started sucking me up," said Angela Smith of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, one of the worst-hit cities.

In Birmingham, Alabama, which was also hard hit, Police Chief A.C. Roper said rescue workers sifted through rubble "hand to hand" on Thursday to pull people from destroyed homes.

"We even rescued two babies, one that was trapped in a crib when the house fell down on top of the baby," Roper said in an interview on PBS NewsHour.

Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating.

Wednesday was the deadliest day of tornadoes in the United States since 310 people lost their lives on April 3, 1974.

Given the apparent destruction, insurance experts were wary of estimating damage costs, but believed they would run into the billions of dollars, with the worst impact concentrated in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.

"In terms of the ground-up damage and quite possibly the insured damage, this event will be of historic proportions," Jose Miranda, an executive with the catastrophe risk modeling firm EQECAT, told Reuters.

'ONE OF THRE WORST'

"I think this is going to rank up as one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history," said Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate.

Fugate spoke in an interview with CNN from Alabama, where his agency said the tornadoes killed at least 204 people. There were still unconfirmed reports late on Thursday of "entire towns flattened" in northern parts of the state, Fugate said.

"We're still trying to get people through rescues and locate the missing," he said.

In preliminary estimates, other states' officials reported 33 killed in Mississippi, 34 in Tennessee, 11 in Arkansas, 14 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and two in Louisiana.

The mile-wide monster twister that tore on Wednesday through Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama, may have been the biggest ever to hit the state, AccuWeather.com meteorologist Josh Nagelberg said.

Obama said he would visit Alabama on Friday to see the damage and meet the governor. He declared a state of emergency for Alabama and ordered federal aid.

"I want every American who has been affected by this disaster to know that the federal government will do everything we can to help you recover, and we will stand with you as you rebuild," Obama said at the White House.

Miranda said estimated costs would be "in the same ballpark" as an Oklahoma City tornado outbreak in 1999 that caused $1.58 billion of damage and a 2003 tornado outbreak in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma that caused $4.5 billion of damage.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama was expected to be shut for days, possibly weeks, as workers repaired damaged transmission lines.

But the backup systems worked as intended to prevent a partial meltdown like the nuclear disaster in Japan.

The rampaging tornadoes and violent storms destroyed 200 chicken houses that held up to 4 million chickens in Alabama, the No. 3 U.S. chicken producer.

They also battered a local coal mine.

Up to 1 million people in Alabama were left without power.

Daimler said it had shut down its Mercedes-Benz vehicle assembly plant in Tuscaloosa until Monday due to the tornadoes, but the plant itself sustained only minor damage.

'SOUNDED LIKE CHAIN-SAW'

Some of the worst devastation occurred in Tuscaloosa, a town of about 95,000 in the west-central part of Alabama, where at least 37 people were killed, including some students.

"It sounded like a chain-saw. You could hear the debris hitting things. All I have left is a few clothes and tools that were too heavy for the storm to pick up. It doesn't seem real," said student Steve Niven, 24.

"I can buy new things but you cannot replace the people. I feel sorry for those who lost loved ones," Niven told Reuters.

The campus of the University of Alabama, home of the famous Crimson Tide football team, was not badly damaged, but some students were killed off campus, Bentley said.

Shops, shopping malls, drug stores, gas stations and dry cleaners were all flattened in one section of Tuscaloosa.

Alabama's governor declared a state of emergency and deployed 2,000 National Guard members. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia also declared states of emergency.

Among the Alabama counties affected was Jefferson, which is struggling to avert what would be the largest bankruptcy in municipal history over a $3.2 billion bond debt.

The county suffered "widespread damage," a local emergency spokesman said, and at least 17 people were killed.

(Additional reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham and Leigh Coleman in Biloxi, Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Tom Brown in Miami, Will Dunham in Washington; Writing by Matthew Bigg and Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Peter Cooney)

    Tornadoes tear across South, killing over 306, R, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-weather-idUSTRE73P2PK20110429

After Storms Kill Hundreds,

South Tries to Regroup

April 29, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and KIM SEVERSON

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — As President Obama visited Alabama on Friday, which was at the epicenter of a region that endured storms that killed hundreds across the South, people from Texas to Virginia searched through the rubble of their homes, schools and businesses for survivors.

Nearly 300 people across six states died in the storms, with the vast majority — 213 people — in Alabama. This college town, the home of the University of Alabama, has in some places been shorn to the slab, and accounts for at least 36 of those deaths.

Thousands have been injured, and untold more have been left homeless, hauling their belongings in garbage bags or rooting through disgorged piles of wood and siding to find anything salvageable.

By Friday morning, gasoline and other supplies were getting difficult to find in parts of Alabama. County emergency directors cautioned people to not show up to help.

“They don’t yet have an infrastructure to handle donations or volunteers,” Phyllis Little, the Coleman County emergency management director, told a Birmingham television station. “Right now, we’re not in a ready mode to receive donations or volunteers yet. We are working toward that. Hopefully by tomorrow or Sunday, I’ll have better answers.”

In Pleasant Grove, Ala., a community near Birmingham where nine people died, a church was taking food donations — hamburgers, corn dogs, bottled water — and serving as a makeshift kitchen for hundreds of people who are now homeless. In other areas, the Red Cross is providing meals at shelters.

While Alabama was hit the hardest, the storm spared few states across the South. Thirty-three people were reported dead in Tennessee, 32 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 5 in Virginia and one in Kentucky, according to The Associated Press. With search and rescue crews still climbing through debris and making their way down tree-strewn country roads, the toll is expected to rise.

“History tells me estimating deaths is a bad business,” said W. Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, in a conference call with reporters on Thursday.

Cries could be heard into the night here in Tuscaloosa on Wednesday, but on Thursday hope had dwindled. Mayor Walt Maddox said that the search and rescue operation would go for 24 to 48 more hours, before the response pivoted its focus to recovery.

“They’re looking for five kids in this rubble here,” said Lathesia Jackson-Gibson, 33, a nurse, pointing to the incoherent heap of planks and household appliances sitting next to the muddled guts of her own house. “They’re mostly small kids.”

Mr. Obama landed in Tuscaloosa on Friday morning to visit the hard-hit town and to reaffirm the federal government’s support in the region’s recovery.

Gov. Robert Bentley toured the state by helicopter on Thursday along with federal officials, tracking a vast scar that stretched from Birmingham to his hometown, Tuscaloosa. He declared Alabama “a major, major disaster.”

“As we flew down from Birmingham, the track is all the way down, and then when you get in Tuscaloosa here it’s devastating,” Governor Bentley said at an afternoon news conference, with an obliterated commercial strip as a backdrop.

An enormous response operation was under way across the South, with emergency officials working alongside churches, sororities and other volunteer groups. In Alabama, more than 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed.

Across nine states, more than 1,680 people spent Wednesday in Red Cross shelters, said Attie Poirier, a spokeswoman with the organization. The last time the Red Cross had set up such an elaborate system of shelters was after Hurricane Katrina, a comparison made by even some of those who had known the experience firsthand.

“It reminds me of home so much,” said Eric Hamilton, 40, a former Louisianan, who was sitting on the sidewalk outside the Belk Activity Center, which was being used as a Red Cross shelter in south Tuscaloosa.

Mr. Hamilton lived in a poor area of Tuscaloosa called Alberta City, which residents now describe merely as “gone.” He wiped tears off his cheeks.

“I’ve never seen so many bodies,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Babies, women. So many bodies.”

Officials at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said they had received 137 tornado reports on Wednesday, with 104 of them coming from Alabama and Mississippi. Over all, there have been 297 confirmed tornadoes this month, breaking a 36-year-old record.

Southerners, who have had to learn the drill all too well this month, watched with dread on Wednesday night as the shape-shifting storm system crept eastward across the weather map. Upon hearing the rumble of a tornado, or even the hysterical barking of a family dog, people crammed into closets, bathtubs and restaurant coolers, clutching their children and family photos.

Many of the lucky survivors found a completely different world when they opened their closet doors.

“We heard crashing,” said Steve Sikes, 48, who lives in a middle-class Tuscaloosa neighborhood called the Downs. “Then dirt and pine needles came under the door. We smelled pine.

“When you smell pine,” he said, gesturing, by way of a conclusion, toward a wooden wreck behind him, so mangled that it was hard to tell where tree ended and house began.

Some opened the closet to the open sky, where their roof had been, some yelled until other family members pulled the shelves and walls off them. Others never got out.

Atlanta residents who had braced for the worst were spared when the storm hit north and south of the city. Across Georgia, many schools in rural areas sustained so much damage they will close for the rest of the year.

In Mississippi, the carnage was worst in the piney hill country in the northeastern part of the state. Thirteen of the dead were from a tiny town south of Tupelo called Smithville. Most of the buildings in Smithville, which has a population of less than 800, were gone.

“It looks to be pretty much devastated,” said Brent Carr, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

The damage in Alabama was scattered across the northern and central parts of the state as a mile-wide tornado lumbered upward from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham. More than 1,700 people have been examined or treated at local hospitals, according to officials at the Alabama Hospital Association.

The deaths were scattered around the state: six in the small town of Arab, 14 in urban Jefferson County.

More than a million people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were left without power, with much of the loss caused by severe damage to transmitters at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant west of Huntsville, Ala. The plant itself was not damaged, but the dozens of poles that carry electricity to local power companies were down.

“We have no place to send the power at this point,” said Scott Brooks, a spokesman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which sells electricity to companies in seven states. “We’re not talking hours, we’re talking days.”

In Tuscaloosa, Governor Bentley, a Republican, made it clear that Alabama would need substantial federal assistance.

“We’re going to have to have help from the federal government in order to get through this in an expeditious way,” he said.

Mr. Fugate, the FEMA administrator, emphasized in a number of appearances that the agency’s job at this stage was to play “a support role” to the states in recovery efforts, not to lead them. “Everybody wants to know who’s in charge. I can tell you this. Alabama’s governor is in charge. We’re in support,” he said.

The University of Alabama campus here was mostly spared, said Robert E. Witt, the president, but about 70 students with no other place to stay spent the night in the recreation center on campus. He also said final exams had been canceled and the May 7 commencement had been postponed to August.

Along with the swath of destruction it cut through Tuscaloosa, the tornado smashed up the town’s capacity to recover. The headquarters of the county emergency management agency was badly damaged, as well as the city’s fleet of garbage trucks.

At Rosedale Court, a low-income housing project, large crowds of former residents walked aimlessly back and forth in front of the mangled buildings where they had woken up the day before. A door-to-door search was continuing.

Three women approached Willie Fort, the assistant director of the authority, and asked why the residents were just milling around the destruction and not moving on to shelters. Mr. Fort urged patience.

“When folks lose everything they just looking and holding on,” he said to the women. “Everything’s gone. Their cars are gone. Everything. These people ain’t got nothing.”

 

Campbell Robertson reported from Tuscaloosa, and Kim Severson from Atlanta. Kevin Sack contributed reporting from Tuscaloosa, and Robbie Brown from Birmingham, Ala.

    After Storms Kill Hundreds, South Tries to Regroup, NYT, 29.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/30/us/30storm.html

Town’s Survivors

Emerge to Face the Worst

April 28, 2011
The New York Times
By ROBBIE BROWN

PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. — John Walkingshaw, 64, a retired police officer, was standing in front of his house, smoking a Pall Mall cigarette.

The front of his house was half-missing — entire walls sitting in his yard instead of holding up his home. His car, a red Lincoln sedan, was half-buried under mud and debris.

Where will he live? “We have no idea,” he said. He and his wife, who had lived in the house for 36 years, have no relatives in the area.

Mr. Walkingshaw said he was focused on more immediate tasks: getting some clothes and a little money and securing his collection of maritime art, including an undamaged painting of the Titanic’s sinking.

He said he would be all right financially; he just needed another house until he could rebuild. “We’re lucky,” he said. “We’re alive.”

No one knows yet how many people died in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham, but on Thursday, much of it lay in ruins.

The tornado cut a path that mowed down nearly every tree in town, pulled houses off their foundations and flipped family cars. All over town on Thursday, rescue workers were pulling bodies out of houses as survivors tried to locate lost pets and retain a few belongings, some of which had been blown out of their homes.

The house owned by Joyce Smith, 54, who works for the county Board of Education, and her husband, Lee, 57, who is employed by a public utility, had only a few of its walls left standing. Most of the family’s furniture, including a large sofa, was now in their backyard.

The couple had huddled in a bathroom during the storm.

On Thursday morning, Mrs. Smith was standing in the yard, surveying the damage and sobbing into a cellphone.

“It’s just all gone. There’s nothing. You just look around and there’s nothing. It’s all gone,” she told a friend.

Mr. Smith said people had been caught off guard. Tornadoes are not uncommon, he said, but they do not usually cause this much damage.

“There’s been so many storms that end up just being high wind and rain,” he said. “We figured this would be the same.”

Looking over the damage that stretched miles in several directions, he said: “It spared us. But it got everything else.”

Not far away, Vicki Wood, 52, wore a green T-shirt and rain boots as she walked through a field of rubble.

Her house held up, but her daughter Tiffany’s house had been destroyed. Luckily, Tiffany had spent the night at her mother’s house — down in the basement.

“This is just total devastation,” she said. “I’ve seen Katrina. I’ve seen an F-5 tornado. But this is different. This is the worst.”

She was picking through what was left of Tiffany’s house. Everything inside, and bits of the house itself, had been scattered around the yard and spilled into the street. There were bicycles and mattresses. A man’s dress shirt dangled from a tree limb 20 feet off the ground. She stooped down to pick up photographs, some children’s clothes, a mangled motorcycle.

“Everybody knows each other,” Ms. Wood said of the town. “We go to church together. We play ball together. One death would affect everybody in this community. I just can’t imagine with this.”

She said that once the tornado had passed through, she and her daughter had emerged to witness the unimaginable — their quiet, middle-class community as a war zone. Children were being carried on planks of wood or ripped-off doors. People were looking feverishly for ambulances or rides to the hospital. An 80-year-old woman who lived nearby was missing and her house was demolished. (She was later found and taken to a hospital.) Several people Ms. Wood knew were dead.

There had been warnings that a tornado might be touching down, Ms. Wood said, but as with any tornado, determining its exact path — whether one location was safer than another — was no more than a guess.

“We knew it was coming,” she said. “We knew what tornadoes could do. We just couldn’t all get out of the way. The people who died, they’re going to be found under a bunch of rubble. These people took cover as much as they could.”

She added: “We had prepared. We knew it was coming. The schools were all closed. The stores were closed. We were just helpless.”

Her main concern now, she said, are the missing. Given the devastation and confusion here, that is a number no one has arrived at yet.

“You have visions of this monster coming through, picking people up and just dumping them somewhere,” she said. “Will we ever find them?”

    Town’s Survivors Emerge to Face the Worst, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/29/us/29pleasant.html

Tornadoes tear across South,

killing over 300

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama | Thu Apr 28, 2011
10:25pm EDT
Reuters
By Verna Gates

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Tornadoes and violent storms tore through seven Southern states, killing at least 306 people and causing billions of dollars of damage in one of the deadliest swarm of twisters in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama described the loss of life as "heartbreaking" and called the damage to homes and businesses "nothing short of catastrophic." He promised strong federal support for rebuilding and plans to view the damage on Friday.

Over several days this week, the powerful tornadoes -- more than 160 reported in total -- combined with storms to cut a swath of destruction heading west to east. It was the worst U.S. natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed up to 1,800 people.

In some areas, whole neighborhoods were flattened, cars flipped over and trees and power lines felled, leaving tangled wreckage.

While rescue officials searched for survivors, some who sheltered in bathtubs, closets and basements told of miraculous escapes. "I made it. I got in a closet, put a pillow over my face and held on for dear life because it started sucking me up," said Angela Smith of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, one of the worst-hit cities.

In Birmingham, Alabama, which was also hard hit, Police Chief A.C. Roper said rescue workers sifted through rubble "hand to hand" on Thursday to pull people from destroyed homes.

"We even rescued two babies, one that was trapped in a crib when the house fell down on top of the baby," Roper said in an interview on PBS NewsHour.

Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating.

Wednesday was the deadliest day of tornadoes in the United States since 310 people lost their lives on April 3, 1974.

Given the apparent destruction, insurance experts were wary of estimating damage costs, but believed they would run into the billions of dollars, with the worst impact concentrated in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham.

"In terms of the ground-up damage and quite possibly the insured damage, this event will be of historic proportions," Jose Miranda, an executive with the catastrophe risk modeling firm EQECAT, told Reuters.

 

'ONE OF THRE WORST'

"I think this is going to rank up as one of the worst tornado outbreaks in U.S. history," said Federal Emergency Management Agency director Craig Fugate.

Fugate spoke in an interview with CNN from Alabama, where his agency said the tornadoes killed at least 204 people. There were still unconfirmed reports late on Thursday of "entire towns flattened" in northern parts of the state, Fugate said.

"We're still trying to get people through rescues and locate the missing," he said.

In preliminary estimates, other states' officials reported 33 killed in Mississippi, 34 in Tennessee, 11 in Arkansas, 14 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and two in Louisiana.

The mile-wide monster twister that tore on Wednesday through Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama, may have been the biggest ever to hit the state, AccuWeather.com meteorologist Josh Nagelberg said.

Obama said he would visit Alabama on Friday to see the damage and meet the governor. He declared a state of emergency for Alabama and ordered federal aid.

"I want every American who has been affected by this disaster to know that the federal government will do everything we can to help you recover, and we will stand with you as you rebuild," Obama said at the White House.

Miranda said estimated costs would be "in the same ballpark" as an Oklahoma City tornado outbreak in 1999 that caused $1.58 billion of damage and a 2003 tornado outbreak in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma that caused $4.5 billion of damage.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama was expected to be shut for days, possibly weeks, as workers repaired damaged transmission lines.

But the backup systems worked as intended to prevent a partial meltdown like the nuclear disaster in Japan.

The rampaging tornadoes and violent storms destroyed 200 chicken houses that held up to 4 million chickens in Alabama, the No. 3 U.S. chicken producer.

They also battered a local coal mine.

Up to 1 million people in Alabama were left without power.

Daimler said it had shut down its Mercedes-Benz vehicle assembly plant in Tuscaloosa until Monday due to the tornadoes, but the plant itself sustained only minor damage.

 

'SOUNDED LIKE CHAIN-SAW'

Some of the worst devastation occurred in Tuscaloosa, a town of about 95,000 in the west-central part of Alabama, where at least 37 people were killed, including some students.

"It sounded like a chain-saw. You could hear the debris hitting things. All I have left is a few clothes and tools that were too heavy for the storm to pick up. It doesn't seem real," said student Steve Niven, 24.

"I can buy new things but you cannot replace the people. I feel sorry for those who lost loved ones," Niven told Reuters.

The campus of the University of Alabama, home of the famous Crimson Tide football team, was not badly damaged, but some students were killed off campus, Bentley said.

Shops, shopping malls, drug stores, gas stations and dry cleaners were all flattened in one section of Tuscaloosa.

Alabama's governor declared a state of emergency and deployed 2,000 National Guard members. Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia also declared states of emergency.

Among the Alabama counties affected was Jefferson, which is struggling to avert what would be the largest bankruptcy in municipal history over a $3.2 billion bond debt.

The county suffered "widespread damage," a local emergency spokesman said, and at least 17 people were killed.

(Additional reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham and Leigh Coleman in Biloxi, Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Tom Brown in Miami, Will Dunham in Washington; Writing by Matthew Bigg and Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Peter Cooney)

    Tornadoes tear across South, killing over 300, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/29/us-weather-idUSTRE73P2PK20110429

Monster twister leaves ruin

in Alabama college town

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama | Thu Apr 28, 2011
1:58pm EDT
By Verna Gates

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Stunned residents of the southern university town of Tuscaloosa on Thursday surveyed a shocking landscape of twisted wreckage left by one of the biggest tornadoes ever to hit the state of Alabama.

In scenes reminiscent of the kind of destruction wrought by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the jumbled rubble of shattered homes and businesses lay entangled with crushed cars, uprooted trees and downed power lines.

At least 37 people were killed in Tuscaloosa, city mayor Walter Maddox said, out of more than 220 who lost their lives when a series of tornadoes and storms ripped from west to east across seven southern states in recent days.

Local residents, though hardened to storms that frequently roar through the humid U.S. south, described as unbelievable the destruction inflicted by the mile-wide twister that struck on Wednesday.

"When I opened my eyes, I had no roof," said Angela Smith, 22, standing in what was her dining room. Her husband Clay Smith had pulled a body from a neighbor's home, she said.

Smith and others told tales of survival, and many people recorded the devastation on cellphones and video cameras.

"I made it. I got in a closet, put a pillow over my face and held on for dear life because it started sucking me up," Smith said.

Tuscaloosa Mayor Walter Maddox told CNN the tornado cut a seven-mile path of devastation through the city of 95,000 inhabitants. It is home to the University of Alabama whose football team, nicknamed the Crimson Tide, is one of the most successful in the country.

"I don't know how anyone survived ... it's an amazing scene, there's parts of the city that I don't recognize," Maddox said in comments to CNN.

Hundreds of people stared awe-struck at wreckage on McFarland Boulevard, a commercial road running through the city. Many students carried what was left of their possessions in bags and suitcases as they walked down city streets.

The tornado, which flipped vehicles and flattened houses, shops and gas stations, could have been the biggest ever to hit Alabama, meteorologist Josh Nagelberg said on the AccuWeather.com website.

 

SCREAMS FOR HELP

Robert Jackson, 50, a Tuscaloosa carpenter, said he knew it was time to get inside when he saw large sheds from a local Home Depot hardware store fly into the air.

"I felt a real cool breeze and saw debris circling. I ran to the hallway with my wife and children. We felt the tornado shaking the house. I haven't prayed that hard in my whole life," he told Reuters.

He emerged to find his house still standing but his concern quickly turned to his daughter, who worked two blocks away in a Wendy's fast restaurant. She survived by climbing into a freezer, but he was shocked by the scene that greeted him as he went to find her.

"I saw four bodies and a lot of blood. People were running out. Electricity was popping. Gas fires were shooting up in the air. People were trapped in houses and screaming for help but we couldn't get to them," he said.

Large parts of the city were without power and businesses were at a standstill on Thursday,.

The tornado reduced the Quick Pawn shop on 15th Street to rubble no higher than 3 feet (one meter) high, studded with planks of wood and tires.

Assorted items were scattered in the wreckage including a pillow, a shirt, a Pepsi machine and a desk chair, a testament to the tornado's power to rearrange a neighborhood.

"We mostly deal in firearms and jewelry. Our firearms were thrown into the street and the neighborhood and were collected by the police," said owner Tim Evans, 46, adding that there was no looting.

(Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and editing by Anthony Boadle)

    Monster twister leaves ruin in Alabama college town, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-usa-weather-tuscaloosa-idUSTRE73R64120110428

Tornadoes and storms

rip through South, at least 227 dead

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama | Thu Apr 28, 2011
1:04pm EDT
Reuters
By Verna Gates

TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (Reuters) - Tornadoes and violent storms ripped through seven southern U.S. states, killing at least 228 people as they flattened neighborhoods, flipped cars and toppled trees and power lines.

In the deadliest series of tornadoes in nearly four decades in the United States, 131 people were killed in Alabama, the worst-hit state which suffered "massive destruction of property," Governor Robert Bentley said on Thursday.

"We expect that number to rise," Bentley said in a conference call with Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Administrator Craig Fugate.

The clusters of powerful tornadoes -- more than 160 in total -- combined with storms to cut a swathe of destruction heading from west to east over several days.

In preliminary estimates, other state officials reported 32 killed in Mississippi, 30 in Tennessee, 11 in Arkansas, 14 in Georgia, eight in Virginia and two in Louisiana.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama was expected to be shut for days, possibly weeks, as workers repaired damaged transmission lines.

But the backup systems worked as intended to prevent a partial meltdown like the nuclear disaster in Japan.

"The reactors will remain shut until we have restored the reliability of the transmission system," said Ray Golden, spokesman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns the 3,274-megawatt plant.

Up to 1 million people in Alabama were left without power.

FEMA chief Fugate said it is too early for his agency to give a confirmed overall death toll and authorities are concentrating on rescue and recovery.

Some of the worst devastation occurred on Wednesday in Alabama, where a massive mile-wide tornado slammed into Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama, killing at least 37 people including some students.

"It sounded like a chain-saw. You could hear the debris hitting things. All I have left is a few clothes and tools that were too heavy for the storm to pick up. It doesn't seem real," said student Steve Niven, 24.

"I can buy new things but you cannot replace the people. I feel sorry for those who lost loved ones," Niven told Reuters.

OBAMA ORDERS AID

Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating.

U.S. President Barack Obama declared a state of emergency for Alabama and ordered federal aid.

"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation and (we) stand ready to continue to help the people of Alabama," he said in a Twitter message on Thursday.

Governor Bentley also declared a state of emergency in Alabama and said he was deploying 2,000 National Guardsman. Governors in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee also declared states of emergency.

"We're in a search-and-rescue mode. We're making sure that those that may be out there that are trapped, that we have not found, we are trying to find them," Bentley told CNN.

"There has been massive devastation across northern Alabama. These long-track tornadoes really tear up the landscape as well as homes," he said.

Shops, shopping malls, drug stores, gas stations and dry cleaners were all flattened in one section of Tuscaloosa, a town of around 95,000 in the west-central part of Alabama.

Wednesday was the deadliest day of tornadoes in the United States since 310 people lost their lives on April 3, 1974, weather forecasters said.

"We have never experienced such a major weather event in our history," said the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the Browns Ferry nuclear plant and provides electricity to 9 million people in seven states.

"Everybody says it (a tornado) sounds like a train and I started to hear the train," Anthony Foote, a resident of Tuscaloosa whose house was badly damaged, told Reuters. "I ran and jumped into the tub and the house started shaking. Then glass started shattering."

The campus of the University of Alabama, home of the famous Crimson Tide football team, was not badly damaged but some students were killed off campus, Bentley said.

Damage in Alabama was spread over a wide area through the north and central part of the state, said Jennifer Ardis, Bentley's press secretary.

Authorities in Alabama and Mississippi said they expect the death toll to rise as emergency workers attempt rescues and recovery in the storm's wake.

 

(Additional reporting by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham and Leigh Coleman in Biloxi, Colleen Jenkins in St. Petersburg; writing by Matthew Bigg and Pascal Fletcher;
Editing by Will Dunham)

    Tornadoes and storms rip through South, at least 227 dead, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-weather-idUSTRE73P2PK20110428

Alabama nuclear plant without power

but shut safely

NEW YORK | Thu Apr 28, 2011
12:38pm EDT
Reuters
By Scott DiSavino

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A nuclear power plant in Alabama that lost power after violent thunderstorms and tornadoes on Wednesday will be down for days and possibly weeks but the backup power systems worked as designed to prevent a partial meltdown like the disaster in Japan.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, one of the biggest in the country, provides power to 2.6 million homes. It has three reactors that are similar in design to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors crippled by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11.

"The reactors will remain shut until we have restored the reliability of the transmission system," said Ray Golden, spokesman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which owns and operates the 3,274-megawatt Alabama plant.

When the plant lost power, the reactors automatically shut down and emergency backup diesel generators kicked in to cool the nuclear fuel. In Japan, the reactors also automatically shutdown when they lost power due to the earthquake but the backup generators were wiped out by the tsunami, allowing the fuel to overheat.

The repairs to the U.S. reactor's transmission lines would take days and could possibly take weeks, Golden said, but the plant itself was undamaged.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is monitoring the plant amid heightened concern about the ability of nuclear plants to withstand natural disasters.

The tornadoes and thunderstorms left a trail of destruction across seven southern U.S. states on Wednesday, killing at least 220 people in southern states, officials said.

The storm knocked out power to about 300,000 homes and businesses, primarily in the northern parts of Alabama and Mississippi, Golden said.

In addition to the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant, the Tennessee Valley Authority operates several other facilities and provides power to about 150 municipal utilities, which distribute electricity to some 9 million people in seven states.

The federally owned power generator said its two nuclear power plants in Tennessee -- Watts Bar and Sequoyah -- were largely unaffected by the storm. Sequoyah continues to provide power to customers and Watts Bar was already shut for scheduled maintenance when the storm hit.

As of 6 a.m. EDT (1000 GMT), the Tennessee Valley Authority had restored 12 large transmission lines but still had another 78 out of service, said another spokesman, Scott Brooks.

 

TWO REACTORS COOLED TO SAFE TEMPERATURE

Two of the units are cooled to a safe temperature so that the water around the reactor's core will not boil away -- as happened at Japan's Fukushima. The third unit should be in cold shutdown soon.

The Browns Ferry nuclear power plant is located in Decatur on the banks of the Wheeler Reservoir along the Tennessee River about 170 miles north of the Alabama state capital of Montgomery.

It has three units -- the 1,065-MW Unit 1, the 1,104-MW Unit 2 and the 1,105-MW Unit 3 -- which are of similar design to the Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

 

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino;

Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Alabama nuclear plant without power but shut safely, R, 28.4.2011,
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/28/us-utilities-operations-tva-browns-idUSTRE73R3RT20110428

Bystanders look at storm damage

along 15th Street in Tuscaloosa April 27.

Photograph: Dusty Compton

The Tuscaloosa News/AP

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Tornadoes kill over 200

28 April 2011

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/tornadoes_kill_over_200.html - broken link

Scores Die

in Storms Across South;

Tornado Ravages City

April 27, 2011
The New York Times
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Devastating storms swept through the South on Wednesday, killing at least 60 people and spawning a tornado that tore through downtown Tuscaloosa, Ala. The evening twister flattened homes and buildings and brought further damage and death to a region already battered by storms.

Across Alabama, at least 50 people were killed by storms on Wednesday alone, according to officials. The Associated Press reported an additional 11 deaths in Mississippi, two in Georgia and one in Tennessee.

The tornado, one of several that struck the state, ripped through Tuscaloosa about 5 p.m. on a northwest path.

It veered past a major medical center, a high school and the campus of the University of Alabama. The extent of the damage was unclear Wednesday evening, but officials said many people were still trapped in homes and buildings. They feared the death toll could rise in the coming days.

Many parts of the state had been on a tornado watch throughout the day, prompting schools, government offices and businesses to shut their doors early or remain closed, Mayor Walter Maddox of Tuscaloosa said in an interview Wednesday evening.

“I believe at the end of the day that will have saved many lives,” he said of the emergency measures. “We have so many reports of damage across the city. We do believe it to be significant.”

Mark Kelly, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Emergency Management Office, said the storm had picked up speed as it barreled out of Tuscaloosa and headed for the western part of the county, passing north of downtown Birmingham, which was battered by another storm early Wednesday morning.

Mr. Kelly said that he had gotten reports of roofs torn from homes, people trapped in buildings, and power lines strewn across interstate roads, but that crews were just beginning to respond. At least 11 people were killed in Jefferson County on Wednesday, “but we expect that number will go up as search and rescue efforts go on through the night and into tomorrow,” he said.

The damage from the tornados was made worse by earlier storms, which left the ground so soaked that instead of the winds just snapping trees and branches, they uprooted entire trees and tossed them onto power lines, said Michael Sznajderman, a spokesman for the Alabama Power Company. He said at least 335,000 customers were without power, and with more storms on the way, “the number of outages could be as high as what we saw with Hurricane Ivan or Hurricane Katrina.”

“It has already surpassed Hurricanes Dennis and Frederick,” he said. “We have line crews on the way from as far away as Illinois to assist in the recovery.”

Power losses were widespread across the University of Alabama, where many students were holed up after the tornado swept just south of the campus.

Emily Crawford, a third-year student at the law school, said she had been preparing for an end-of-semester exam when the tornado swirled by. By nightfall she was still at the law school, which had become a refuge for scores of students, many of whom spoke of devastation in their neighborhoods worse than they had seen reported from Hurricane Katrina.

“It is surreal,” Ms. Crawford said. “People are coming up to the law school because they don’t have anywhere else to go. The school is sending buses into town to pick up students and bring them back to campus so they have somewhere safe to stay.”

The tornado was only the latest in a series that have struck the southern United States this week, causing heavy rains and flooding in an area stretching from Texas to Georgia, officials said Wednesday.

By Wednesday, the storms, which started Monday evening, had also left more than 50,000 people without power from East Texas to Memphis and destroyed scores of homes as the system moved east into Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. The storms were expected to weaken before moving into the Carolinas and up the Eastern Seaboard on Thursday and Friday, according to the National Weather Service.

“Folks in the South should be getting some relief,” said Tom Bradshaw, a meteorologist with the service.

By Wednesday afternoon, Arkansas and Alabama had declared states of emergency after scores of buildings suffered significant damage, including many that had their roofs sheared off.

Wind speeds have reached 135 miles per hour, and mobile homes have been tossed about like toys, Mr. Bradshaw said. Accompanying rains and flash flooding have hit northern Arkansas especially hard, killing at least six people since Monday. Some parts of northern Arkansas have received 20 inches of rain during the past four days.

On Wednesday, a levee on the Black River in northeastern Arkansas failed, flooding local highways but causing no fatalities, officials said.

One of the victims killed this week was a Louisiana police officer who died Tuesday night in Mississippi on a camping trip after he was struck by a tree limb ripped off by high winds, emergency officials in Mississippi said. The officer’s name has not yet been released.

Jim Noles

contributed reporting from Birmingham, Ala.

Scores Die in Storms Across South; Tornado Ravages City, NYT, 27.4.2011,
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/
us/28storm.html 

Faye Hyde sits on a mattress in what was her yard

as she comforts her granddaughter Sierra Goldsmith, 2,

in Concord, Ala. April 27.

Their home was destroyed.

A wave of tornado-spawning storms

strafed the South on Wednesday,

splintering buildings across hard-hit Alabama

and killing nearly 200 people in four states.

At least 58 people died in Alabama alone.

Photograph: Jeff Roberts

The Birmingham News/AP

Boston Globe > Big Picture > Tornadoes kill over 200

28 April 2011

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/04/tornadoes_kill_over_200.html - broken link

Deadly Storms Leave

Thousands Without Power

April 27, 2011
The New York Times
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

VILONIA, Ark. — Twelve people have died during the past two days as a barrage of severe weather swept across parts of the South and wrecked this small town, leaving four dead.

By Wednesday morning, the storms had left more than 50,000 people without power from East Texas to Memphis and destroyed scores of homes.

In Faulkner County, Ark., alone, 60 homes had been destroyed and 51 had sustained major damage, said Shelia Maxwell, director of the county’s Office of Emergency Management.

Six of the 10 deaths in Arkansas were due to flash flooding in the northwest part of the state. Four others were killed by a tornado that touched down and marched through Vilonia, a small town amid farmland a few dozen miles north of Little Rock.

On Tuesday night, storms killed at least two others — including a truck driver in Mississippi who died after he hit a tree that had blown down across a highway near Oxford, the authorities said.

Vilonia is essentially one street, and along both sides on Tuesday afternoon lay snapped trees, unlaced power lines and gutted homes. Members of the National Guard and insurance agents rode through the town, which smelled of sawdust and dampness and resonated with the noise of chainsaws and generators. Residents stood in piles of wreckage looking at the structures somehow both strange and familiar that they once called home.

“The last I heard on the news, it was supposed to miss Vilonia,” said Mike Cash, 33, a construction worker who on Monday night watched the storm’s progress on television and outside his windows with his wife, three children and two dogs.

Mr. Cash said he saw the tornado chugging through the field behind his house. The wind suddenly picked up, and within seconds he had gathered his family in a closet. Two minutes later, his roof was gone.

“I literally watched it tear the house out from under me,” Mr. Cash said. “Everything we have is gone. What’s not broken is waterlogged.”

The four people who died in Faulkner County, where Vilonia is situated, have all been identified by officials. They included a husband and wife from the town of Greenbrier, David and Katherine Talley, who had tried to ride out the storm in the trailer of a big rig. They were killed, said Stephan Hawks, a spokesman for the Faulkner County Office of Emergency Management, when the trailer was blown into a pond.

The two other victims, Charles Mitchell, 55, and Craig Garvin, 63, lived in mobile homes.

Gov. Mike Beebe toured Vilonia on Tuesday, taking in the destruction and remarking that given its scale, the human toll could have been worse.

“These folks have suffered some terrible losses, major damage,” Mr. Beebe said, “and I’m surprised there are no more fatalities based upon looking at some of the damage.”

On Monday, he declared a state of emergency in response to the storms and flooding in the state since April 19.

“And you know,” the governor said, “it may not be over.”

The Associated Press reported that the intense downpour had swollen rivers in Missouri, with the Black River already beginning to pour over the levees in the city of Poplar Bluff in the southeastern part of the state.

Though the damage was most profound here, Monday’s tornadoes were not confined to Vilonia. During a period of four or five hours beginning Monday afternoon and ending just after nightfall, the area around Little Rock was hit by what weather officials believe were several large tornadoes.

A possible tornado struck the Little Rock Air Force Base, causing damage to at least four houses and knocking down electrical lines, a spokesman for the base said. Hot Springs Village, a sprawling gated community with nine golf courses, was also hit by high winds that might have been from a tornado.

In northwest Arkansas, most of the damage has been caused by heavy rains, and at least six people around the state died Monday after rivers and streams overflowed and swept vehicles off roads, officials said.

One of the victims, Consuelo Santillano, 38, had been trying to drive through deep water on Highway 265 near Fayetteville, where the Illinois River, a tributary of the Arkansas River, had flooded. Her 11-year-old son was able to escape as the family’s van was carried downstream.

In Madison County, also in northwest Arkansas, an elderly couple died after driving into waters from War Eagle Creek that had covered Highway 23. Their names have not yet been released.

Robbie Brown contributed reporting from Atlanta,
and Timothy Williams from New York.

Deadly Storms Leave Thousands Without Power,
NYT,
27 April 2011.