Death Toll Reaches 47 in Deadly Storms, 24 Across Tennessee
Rescue Workers Search Door-to-Door in Rural Areas
Last Edited: Wednesday, 06 Feb 2008, 8:35 AM CST
Created: Wednesday, 06 Feb 2008, 8:09 AM CST
This photo was taken near Brownsville at Hwy 54 and Hwy 14 at about 5:40 p.m. Tuesday. Photo courtesy of George and Christy Wren. SideBar
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By JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press Writer
ATKINS, Ark. (WHBQ FOX13 myfoxmemphis.com) – -- Authorities went door-to-door early Wednesday searching for more victims of deadly tornadoes that ripped the roof off a shopping mall and blew apart warehouses as they tore across four states. At least 47 people were reported dead throughout the South.
The victims included 24 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and three in Alabama, emergency officials said. Among those killed were Arkansas parents who died with their 11-year-old in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock.
The family died from trauma when the storm their home "took a direct hit" from the storm, Pope County Coroner Leonard Krout said.
"Neighbors and friends who were there said, 'There used to be a home there,"' Krout said.
In addition to the three dead at Atkins, another Pope County resident was killed, according to the state Department of Emergency Management. Three people were killed in Van Buren County, said Chad Mason, a jailer at the sheriff's department. Two deaths were reported in Conway and Izard counties and one each in Baxter and Stone counties.
Searchers in Arkansas moved out to head door-to-door in Atkins in Pope County and in Clinton in Van Buren County to look for more victims.
Mason said the damage was vast in Clinton.
"It (the tornado) took out a lot. Normally there's a tree line off (U.S. Highway) 65 in the city here in Clinton. Now, you can see all the way across the valley," Mason said. Also, a boat manufacturing plant was badly damaged, he said.
About 100 volunteers fanned out in Atkins and the surrounding area on Wednesday morning. Searchers left in pickup trucks, police cruisers and Army National Guard Humvees.
The searchers used bright orange spray paint to mark homes they'd covered. They used a system of hash marks to indicate damage, any victims found and any hazards, such as leaking natural gas.
Sleet that was falling earlier at Atkins had shifted to light snow as the sun rose.
Electricity was out Wednesday morning to 22,000 customers of Entergy Arkansas, down from 40,000 on Tuesday night. Entergy spokesman James Thompson said crews are running into more damage and the pace is slowing for getting power back to homes. He said Arkansas' largest electric utility has summoned 350 workers from other states to help.
The greatest number of remaining outages, 8,000, are in the Batesville area. Little Rock had 4,000 out. Another 2,400 were out in the Harrison area and 2,200 in and around Russellville. Thompson said there were numerous areas with "100 here, 200 there without power," areas that were taking time for crews to reach.
"We're still assessing with daylight a lot of the damage. We know the obvious places. We feel there's a lot of areas where scout teams will find more poles and lines down.
The twisters, which also slammed Mississippi, were part of a line of storms that raged across the nation's midsection at the end of the Super Tuesday primaries in several states. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, candidates including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.
Northeast of Nashville, Tenn., a spectacular fire erupted at a natural gas pumping station northeast of Nashville that authorities said could have been damaged by the storms. An undetermined number of people were reported dead.
Eight students were trapped in a battered dormitory at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., until they were finally freed.
Well after nightfall Tuesday, would-be rescuers went through shattered homes in Atkins, a town of 3,000 near the Arkansas River. Around them, power lines snaked along streets and a deep-orange pickup truck rested on its side. A navy blue Mustang with a demolished front end was marked with spray paint to show it had been searched.
Outside one damaged home, horses whinnied in the darkness, looking up only when a flashlight reached their eyes. A ranch home stood unscathed across the street from a concrete slab that had supported the house where the family of three died.
Gov. Mike Beebe planned to tour Atkins on Wednesday.
In Memphis, high winds collapsed the roof of a Sears store at a mall. Debris that included bricks and air conditioning units was scattered on the parking lot, where about two dozen vehicles were damaged.
A few people north of the mall took shelter under a bridge and were washed away, but they were pulled out of the Wolf River with only scrapes, said Steve Cole of the Memphis Police Department.
In Mississippi, Desoto County Sheriff's Department Cmdr. Steve Atkinson said a twister shredded warehouses in an industrial park in the city of Southaven, just south of Memphis. {This is really close to where we live}
"It ripped the warehouses apart. The best way to describe it is it looks like a bomb went off," Atkinson said.
The power was knocked out briefly at a Little Rock convention hall that hosted a watch party for Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor seeking the GOP nomination for president.
"While we hope tonight is a time for us to celebrate election results, we are reminded that nothing is as important as the lives of these fellow Arkansans, and our hearts go out to their families," Huckabee said.
Officials do not know what started a fire at the Columbia Gulf Natural Gas pumping station near Green Grove, about 40 miles from Nashville. The blaze could be seen in the night sky for miles around, with flames shooting "400, 500 feet in the air," said Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Donnie Smith.
The couple killed with their adult daughter were in their mobile home near Greenville in western Kentucky when a tornado went through their trailer park.
On Jan. 8, tornadoes were reported in Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. Two died in the Missouri storms.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Ryan Lenz in Greenville, Ky., Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., and Woody Baird in Memphis, Tenn.
In addition to the three dead at Atkins, another Pope County resident was killed, according to the state Department of Emergency Management. Two deaths were reported in Conway and Izard counties and one each in Baxter, Stone and Van Buren counties.
