Clear-up starts after storms kill 12 in US
Residents today began rebuilding a day after tornadoes killed 12 people in Tennessee in the southern United States, the second wave of violent weather to hit the state in less than a week.
“We’ll get on our feet again,” Bernard Tavers said as he surveyed the demolished homes and piles of rubble in his neighbourhood of Gallatin.
Crews worked to clear away the wreckage and restore services, but some people could be without electricity for a week, officials said.
Police patrolled the wrecked neighbourhoods but there had been no reports of looting. Bystanders were warned not to smoke because of leaking gas.
The tornado’s path through the Gallatin area was at least 10 miles long, said Jimmy Templeton of the Sumner County Sheriff’s Department.
Talmadge Woodall described the twister that destroyed his house in an upscale subdivision in Gallatin, near Nashville, on Friday afternoon as “rolling, throwing debris hundreds of feet in the air.”
“These were at least half-million-dollar homes or better,” said Woodall, 81. “Now there’s nothing left. I didn’t even have a shingle off my house.”
Later on Friday and early Saturday, another line of severe thunderstorms rolled through Alabama and Georgia. Homes and businesses were damaged in the Atlanta suburbs, but the National Weather Service had not confirmed whether the area was hit by tornadoes.
“Several businesses are totally destroyed. Trees literally are sitting inside of houses,” Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine said.
Several people were injured in Alabama, two by falling trees, but no deaths were reported, officials said.
The storms also pounded southern West Virginia, blacking out more than 16,000 customers, utilities said.
Weather officials said tornadoes were spotted on Friday in about 10 Tennessee counties, but the worst damage appeared to be in the suburbs north-east of Nashville.
The National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Centre said it had 47 preliminary reports suggesting tornadoes across the South on Friday.
Seven people were killed in Tennessee’s Sumner County and three were killed in Warren County, south-east of Nashville. Two more died during the night in a Gallatin hospital, state Emergency Management Agency spokesman Randy Harris said. Hospitals admitted at least 60 people with storm-related injuries.
Last weekend, violent weather including tornadoes killed 24 people in western Tennessee and four others in Missouri and Illinois.
Nashville Electrical Service reported hundreds o electrical lines down and power outages for up to 16,000 customers, mostly in Goodlettsville. The number of customers blacked out was down to 1,100 early today, officials said. Some people might have to wait a week for their power lines to be rebuilt, NES spokeswoman Laurie Parker said Saturday.
The number of tornadoes in the US is up dramatically this year compared with the past few years, which were unusually mild, according to the Storm Prediction Centre in Norman, Oklahoma.
Through the end of March, an estimated 286 tornadoes had hit the US, compared with an average of 70 for the same three-month period in each of the past three years. The number of tornado-related deaths was 38 before Friday’s storms, compared to an average of 45 a year from 2003 to 2005, the centre said.
