At least five dead as storms wreak havoc in central US
CHARLeSTOn: The death toll rose to at least five after severe thunderstorms swept through the central United States, spawning a tornado that flattened homes, gale force winds and widespread flooding from the Upper Midwest to Appalachia.
The weather system, which stretched from Texas to the Canadian Maritime provinces, had prompted several emergency declarations even before the dangerous storms arrived.
In southwestern Michigan, the body of a 48-year-old man was found floating in floodwaters on Sunday in Kalamazoo, city Public Safety Lt David Thomas said.
Kalamazoo has been hard hit by flooding from last week’s heavy rains and melting snow.
In Kentucky, authorities said three people died. Two bodies were recovered from submerged vehicles in separate incidents on Saturday.
A body was recovered from a vehicle in a ditch in western Kentucky near Morganfield, the Henderson Fire Department said.
A man’s body was also pulled from a vehicle in a creek near the south central Kentucky community of Franklin on Saturday, the Simpson County Sheriff’s Office said.
About 32km away, Dallas Jane Combs, 79, died after a suspected tornado destroyed her Adairville home while she was inside it earlier on Saturday, the Logan County Sheriff ’s Office said.
The fifth death was in northeast Arkansas, where an 83-year-old man was killed after high winds toppled a trailer home.
Clay County Sheriff Terry Miller told KAIT-TV that Albert Foster died on Saturday night after the home was blown into a pond.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service said the roof was blown off a hotel in Osceola, about 257km north of Memphis, Tennessee.
In Middle Tennessee, the National Weather Service on Sunday confirmed that an EF-2 tornado with maximum winds of 193kph hit Clarksville on Saturday.
Montgomery County Sheriff ’s Office spokesman Sandra Brandon said at least four homes were destroyed and dozens of others damaged, while 75 cars at a tire plant parking lot had their windows blown out or were tossed onto one other.
“To look at what I’m looking at and know we didn’t lose anybody is just a miracle,” Montgomery County Mayor Jim Durrett told The LeafChronicle newspaper.
At Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, a teenage girl was hit by falling debris at a college bas- ketball game after an apparent lightning strike knocked a hole in the arena’s roof on Saturday night.
The governors of Missouri, Indiana and Illinois declared disaster emergencies.
Flood watches and warnings spanned multiple states while a wind advisory remained in effect for nearly all of Lower Michigan. — AP