More than half a million homes and businesses were without power as of noon Saturday after storms and tornadoes ripped through the southern and midwestern US leaving a trail of destruction.
Ohio was one of the hardest hit states with some 200,000 people without power, according to PowerOutage.us.
At least 26 people have been killed by confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states that destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees and leveled neighborhoods across a wide swath of the country. The dead included at least nine in one Tennessee county, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, three in Sullivan, Indiana and four in Illinois.
Other deaths were reported from the storms that raged late Friday into Saturday in Alabama and Mississippi, along with a near Little Rock, Arkansas, where city officials said more than 2,600 buildings were in the path of a tornado.
Residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke up Saturday to find the roof of the high school smashed and windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to lumps. Broken walls, windows, and roofs punctured homes and businesses.
Debris lay scattered inside the structures of the houses and on the lawn: clothing, insulation, toys, splintered furniture, a van with broken windows.
Some survivors said that when they left their houses they found destroyed buildings, vehicles lying like toys, broken glass and felled trees.
The National Weather Service said the tornado was a high-end EF3 (Enhanced Fujita Scale) tornado with wind speeds of up to 265 kph (165 mph) and a track of up to 40 kilometers (25 miles).
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. On Saturday, Sanders requested a major disaster declaration from President Joe Biden to support recovery efforts with federal resources.
It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes from the last event, said Bill Bunting, head of forecasting operations at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.
A threat of tornadoes and hail remained for the Northeast, including in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.