 |
| A house is left damaged after an
aparent tornado hit on Saturday, April 14, in Thurman, Iowa. The
National Weather Service received more than 88 reports by late Saturday
of possible tornado touchdowns in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa,
said Pat Slattery, a spokesman for the service's Central Region in
Kansas City, Missouri. |
A father and two children in a trailer, plus two other people who were in a car in the same Oklahoma town, were killed when a string of tornadoes tore through parts of the Midwest on Saturday and early Sunday.
Those fatalities in Woodward are the only ones known to have resulted from this weekend's storms. But millions of people were bracing for even more severe weather late Sunday afternoon and night.
The states in the "bull's-eye" for the most dangerous conditions will likely be Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, according to the Storm Prediction Center. Bigger cities such as Green Bay, Chicago, St. Louis, Little Rock and Houston could see isolated tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds.
"We think in the next couple of hours the atmosphere is really going to explode," CNN meteorologist Jacqui Jeras said shortly after 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET).
A tornado watch was in effect through 6 p.m. in 25 counties in Missouri and 24 in Arkansas, the National Weather Service reported.
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The agency has received 126 reports of possible tornado touchdowns Saturday and early Sunday in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback told CNN that "97 tornadoes touched down" in his state, a figure not yet confirmed by the National Weather Service.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency for 12 counties, including Woodward, where the deaths occurred.
Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill said 37 people in his small city of about 12,000 people were injured, several of them critically, when the storm struck shortly after midnight. Matt Lehenbauer, director of emergency management for Woodward, said 29 people have been treated for injuries.
"This thing comes in the middle of the night. It caught us asleep, mostly," Hill told CNN.
In addition to leveling 89 homes and 13 businesses, the storm "took out" the transmitter for the public siren and tornado notification system, and "we lost our manual override" when the electricity was knocked out, City Manager Alan Riffel said.
"We don't know if it would have saved those killed, but I'm sure we could have woke people up with sirens if they were working," said Hill.
The dead include a father and his two children, who were inside their trailer at the Hidden Valley Mobile Home Park when the tornado rolled through, according to Hill.
The other two people died when the car they were in rolled over several times.
"It's hard to visualize" such a tragedy, Hill said.
Officials credited working early warning systems elsewhere in the region with preventing more fatalities.
Advisories from the system were issued two days in advance, rather than just a matter of hours, and were "remarkably accurate," said Brownback, the Kansas governor. "People took it very seriously."
In southwest Iowa, officials evacuated the entire population -- roughly 300 people -- of the town of Thurman after a suspected tornado struck Saturday, damaging or destroying three out of every four homes.
By early Sunday morning, many Thurman residents who took up temporary shelter at a high school in nearby Tabor were again in the path of a storm that spawned suspected tornadoes in neighboring Kansas.
A sign in a park that bears the town's name is one of the few things still standing, said Mike Crecelius, Fremont County's emergency management director.
"That's about all there is. About 75% of the homes are damaged or destroyed," he said. "From the looks of things, there won't be a tree left in that town either."
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Four truckers whose rigs were blown off Interstate 29 were the only ones hospitalized -- one with a punctured lung -- due to this particular tornado, the National Weather Service said. The agency reported the twister had winds between 111 and 135 mph as it caused a half-mile long damage path over 10 miles.
Across the south and central Plains, storm chasers broadcast images of funnel clouds roaring through rural landscapes.
One of the biggest cities hit Saturday and early Sunday was Wichita, Kansas, where resident Katie Sykes said torrential rains produced a "river in my front yard" and the prospect of a tornado had her shuddering in fear.
"When I was little we prepared for storms, hearing the sirens and then going to the basement. And going through this experience I felt like a little kid, young and scared," the CNN iReporters said.
In the basement of her downtown home, 30-year-old Lacy Jay Hansen and her family donned bicycle helmets and crouched against a corner as a suspected tornado churned its way toward her home.
"It turned right in the nick of time for us, striking this other neighborhood," she said, later learning the storm destroyed a friend's house several miles away.
Eleven months ago, Hansen, her husband and son were in Joplin, Missouri, visiting their ailing grandfather in a hospital when a tornado ripped through, killing 158 people.
"None of us were supposed to be there," she said. "We've always taken it seriously. But ever since then, we take it more seriously."
The tornado that tore through Joplin was one of 1,691 tornadoes that killed a total of 550 people in 2011, according to the National Weather Service. Last year was the 4th deadliest tornado year in U.S. history.
The tragedy in Joplin triggered stronger warnings by the weather service about life-threatening storms. More than 24 hours before the storms began rolling across the Midwest on Saturday, the service was cautioning residents of the storm's potential damage.
At the Marriott in downtown Wichita, Johnny Williams watched over eight children -- in town for a basketball camp -- in a ballroom where they'd taken shelter.
"We play together as a team, and we believe together as a team," Williams said.
The storm caused flooding in parts of downtown Wichita, and McConnell Air Force Base also sustained damage, authorities said. A suspected tornado tossed baggage carts across runways at the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport but didn't cause any structural damage, Sedgwick County spokeswoman Kristi Zuckovich said.
A few hundred employees were working at a Spirit Aero Systems plant, producing fuselages and other equipment for Boeing aircraft, said company spokesman Ken Evans, when a twister came through and caused the roof to collapse. No one was injured, and workers have been told not to come in until Wednesday as the damage is assessed, added Evans.
Damage was also reported to a Hawker Beechcraft building, which manufactures high-performance business jets and turbo-prop planes.
Country singer Miranda Lambert's concert Saturday night at the Intrust Bank arena in Wichita was interrupted by an apparent tornado. She was taken off the stage and fans were kept inside, said Lt. Jason Gill of the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office.
Later, Lambert tweeted, "We made it y'all. Thanks for coming out and for making it through the delay with a smile."
The storm destroyed six mobile homes in Wichita County, officials said, but didn't cause any known fatalities in the area.
Earlier, a confirmed tornado struck a hospital in Creston, Iowa, blowing out windows and damaging the roof, said John Benson of the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management agency. There were no major injuries reported, and patients were relocated to other area hospitals.
