Tornadoes leave trail of destruction
9 people die in U.S. as storm, blizzard rakes from Kansas to Mississippi
CANTON, TEXAS — At least nine people have been killed by tornadoes or flooding in the U.S. south and Midwest by a storm that also dumped a rare late-season blizzard in western Kansas on Sunday.
Tornadoes hit several small towns in east Texas, killing four people. Three people were killed by flooding and winds in Arkansas, with officials saying two more people are missing. Rushing water swept away a car, drowning a woman in Missouri; and a death was reported in Sunday morning storms that raked Mississippi.
Flooding closed part of Interstate 44 near Hazelgreen, Mo., and officials expected it would be at least a day before the highway reopened. Interstate 70 in western Kansas was closed because crews were waiting for snow to subside that was falling at eight to 10 centimetres an hour that was being blown by 55 km/h winds.
Rescuers in northwest Arkansas continued Sunday to look for an 18-month-old girl and a fouryear-old boy who were in a vehicle swept off a bridge by flood waters in Hindsville, the Madison County Sheriff ’s Office said.
In northwest Arkansas, a 10-year-old girl drowned in Springdale and the body of a woman who disappeared riding an inner tube Saturday was found in a creek in Eureka Springs. Also, a 65-yearold woman in DeWitt in the eastern part of the state was struck and killed in her home by a falling tree, officials said.
In Texas, search teams were going door to door Sunday after the tornadoes the day before flattened homes, uprooted trees and flipped several pickup trucks at a dealership in Canton.
“It is heartbreaking and upsetting to say the least,” Canton Mayor Lou Ann Everett said Sunday.
The National Weather Service found evidence of four tornadoes with one twister possibly on the ground for 80 kilometres.
The first reports of tornadoes came about 4:45 p.m. Saturday, but emergency crews were hampered by continuing severe weather, said Judge Don Kirkpatrick, the chief executive for Van Zandt County.
“We’d be out there working and get a report of another tornado on the ground,” he said.
The storms rolled through Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on Sunday with strong winds causing isolated pockets of damage. In Durant, in central Mississippi, one person died.
Alexa Haik went to bed Saturday night expecting just rain, but heard the sirens Sunday morning and turned on the TV to see the tornado warning. She rounded up her pets and hid in a hallway with her family, then was stunned to emerge to trees down all in her neighbourhood in Clinton, Miss., 30 kilometres west of Jackson.
Our little subdivision was the only one hit,” Haik said.
Near Clever in southwestern Missouri, a man tried to save his 72-year-old wife from flood waters that swept away their vehicle Saturday, but her body was found when the water receded, the Missouri State Highway Patrol said.