I hope Dani is okay
if my memory serves me right she lives in Tennessee
Tornado Rips Through West Tennessee, KY, AR; 54 Reported Dead
http://news.theage.com.au/us-twisters-k ... -1qq5.html
The deadliest barrage of tornadoes in 23 years has killed at least 55 people across five US states, and authorities fear the toll will rise.
Rescue crews are continuing the search for more victims after twisters roared across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama on Tuesday.
The storms flattened entire streets, reducing homes to piles of splintered wood, and hurled cars and trucks around like toys.
Emergency workers spent Wednesday going door-to-door in a painstaking search for survivors, their efforts hampered by debris, power lines and fires fed by broken gas pipes.
"We had a beautiful neighbourhood. Now it's hell," said Bonnie Brawner, 80, who lives in Hartsville, Tennessee, where a natural gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 120 metres high.
"It looks like the Lord took a Brillo (scouring) pad and scrubbed the ground," said Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter.
Hundreds of houses were damaged or destroyed. Authorities had no immediate cost estimate of the damage.
US President George W Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency centre in Georgia.
"Loss of life, loss of property - prayers can help and so can the government," Bush said.
"I do want the people in those states to know the American people are standing with them."
Thirty-one people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said.
It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985.
Students took cover in dormitory bathrooms as the storms closed in on Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. More than 20 students at the Southern Baptist school were trapped behind wreckage and jammed doors after the dormitories came down around them.
Danny Song was pinned for an hour and a half until rescuers dug him from the rubble.
"We looked up and saw the funnel coming in. We started running and then glass just exploded," he said.
"I hit the floor and a couch was shoved up against me, which may have saved my life because the roof fell on top of it."
In northern Alabama, where a mother, father and their teenage son died together in Lawrence county, elderly Gibbson Hill resident Mary Files said she was sound asleep when the storm hit, tearing out the walls and roof of her home.
"It woke me up when the stuff in the house went to falling in. I got my daughter up and we went to the end of the hall by the heater and that's where we stayed."
Most communities had ample warning that the storms were coming.
Forecasters had warned for days severe weather was possible. The National Weather Service issued more than 1,000 tornado warnings to states where the storm fronts were heading.
In fact the conditions for bad weather had lined up so perfectly that the Storm Prediction Centre in Oklahoma was able to put out alerts six days in advance.
"All the clues were there. It was just unfortunate that it came out the way it did," prediction centre director Joseph Schaefer said.
Greg Carbin, the warning coordination meteorologist at the Oklahoma centre, said it was hard to say exactly how many twisters touched the ground, but was believed to be between 30 and 40.
Amid the grief for lives lost, there were tales of survival too.
In Castalian Springs, Tennessee, a baby was discovered unscathed in a field across from a demolished post office. There was no word on the fate of the child's parents.
"He had debris all over him, but there were no obvious sings of trauma," said emergency services spokesman Ken Weidner said.
Seavia Dixon, whose Atkins, Arkansas, home was shattered, stood in her yard, holding muddy baby pictures of her son, who is now a 20-year-old soldier in Iraq. Only a concrete slab was left from the home.
The family's brand-new white pick-up truck was upside-down, about 150 metres from where it was parked before the storm. Another pick-up truck the family owned sat crumpled about 15 metres from the slab.
"You know, it's just material things," Dixon said, her voice breaking.
"We can replace them. We were just lucky to survive."
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