The Devastation of McNairy, Mississippi, and Wynne, Arkansas, As Revealed by South and Midwest Storms and Tornadoes

Devastated communities across the South and Midwest were picking up the pieces and digging through debris Sunday after ferocious storms and tornadoes leveled neighborhoods and left at least 22 people dead.

The storm that wreaked havoc in the Southeast and Mississippi last week was followed by another storm that wreaked havoc in the South and Midwest.

More than 200 people were inside the Apollo Theatre in Belvidere in northern Illinois when its roof collapsed Friday, leaving one person dead and dozens injured, the city fire chief said.

At least seven people died after two back-to-back lines of storms hit McNairy County, Tennessee, where authorities were searching through collapsed buildings Saturday evening.

In nearby McNairy County, where multiple deaths have been reported, sheriff Buck said the death toll could have been much higher if residents had not heeded early warnings and sought out proper shelter.

Deaths were reported across several states, including four people who were killed in Illinois; three people who died in Sullivan, Indiana; and four in Wynne, Arkansas.

The governors of Indiana, Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas all announced emergency or disaster declarations in their states to help free up immediate assistance for impacted counties.

Little Rock, Arkansas, reported no deaths as of Saturday afternoon. Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said efforts are focused on recovery and rebuilding.

“I don’t know how to put it into words. It was devastating. It’s much different seeing it firsthand than it is when you see it on TV hit another communities,” Hobbs said.

In addition to leaving trails of destruction across several states, storms have also knocked out power to battered communities, including over 30,000 customers affected by outages in Arkansas, according to poweroutage.us.

The high school’s roof was shredded and its windows were blown out as a result of a tornado that hit Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles west of Memphis, Tennessee. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.

Some houses in Wynne – home to about 8,000 residents – were completely crushed into piles of wood while others had their roofs ripped off, exposing the interiors of homes littered with storm debris, drone footage provided to CNN shows.

“We made her and the kids get into the bathtub because that’s supposed to be the safest place. All the doors blew out, so we all hid. Double doors in the front, double doors in the back, all the glass in the windows. It all blew out at once,” Pieterick said.

Injuries in Delaware followed by tornadoes after a tragic school shooting and the loss of a concert venue in Washington, D.C.

“Had they not, looking at the devastation that we had, our death toll could have been in the hundreds,” Buck said. “The power of mother nature is something not to be underestimated,” he added.

The roof of a concert venue in Illinois was destroyed by a storm on Saturday, and the path of the earlier storms demolished the Arkansas capital.

The White House announced Sunday that it would provide federal resources, including financial assistance, to support recovery efforts after President Joe Biden issued a major disaster declaration.

It was reported on Sunday that tornadoes touched down in New Jersey and Delaware, where severe weather prompted warnings across a widening area. In southern Delaware, several homes were damaged and roads were closed.

Delaware State Police reported that a person was found dead in a house ravaged by the storm. The cause of death was not known at the time.

Debris lay scattered inside the shells of homes and on lawns: clothing, insulation, toys, splintered furniture, a pickup truck with its windows shattered.

As the tornado passed, the group of people – including her husband and children – huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom, fearing for their lives. They were uninjured by a falling tree in their home.

Gov. Bill Lee drove to the county Saturday to tour the destruction and comfort residents. His worst week as governor came days after a school shooting in Nashville left six people dead, including a family friend, and he said the storm capped it all.

“It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Lee said. “But it seems like your community has responded in a way similar to what Tennessean communities do.”

Jeffrey Day said he called his daughter after seeing on the news that their community of Adamsville was being hit. She screamed when she answered the phone in the closet with her son.

After the storm passed, his daughter crawled out of her destroyed home over barbed wire and drove to a nearby family. On Saturday evening, baby clothes were still strewn about the site.

Three people died when a tree fell on a house in Memphis, according to Christopher Williams, a police spokesman.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/02/1167650510/tornado-damage-south-midwest

The destruction of rural Crawford county, Illinois, by a tornado that knocked out the Apollo: Three killed, eight injured, and many more survivors

I told him that it would be ok, after I sat with him and held his hand. I didn’t really know much else what to do,” concertgoer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.

The crews clean up around the Apollo on Saturday. Business owners picked up glass shards and covered shattered windows.

In Crawford County, Illinois, three people were killed and eight injured when a tornado hit around New Hebron, said Bill Burke, the county board chair.

“We’ve had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house is collapsed on top of them, but luckily they had that safe space to go to,” Rutan said at a news conference.

Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is essentially unrecognizable right now” and several people were rescued overnight. There were many injuries, he said.

The National Weather Service says the tornado had a wind speed up to 165 mph, and was long enough to travel as far as 40 kilometers.

After lunch, a storm roared through his neighborhood, causing him to hide in a laundry room as sheetrock fell. The house was destroyed when he came back.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/02/1167650510/tornado-damage-south-midwest

The Little Rock tornado and the destruction of homes in McNairy County, Arkansas, claimed by 11 people killed in a tornado on Saturday morning

It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes from the latest event, said Bill Bunting, chief of forecast operations at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.

A storm system brought dozens of wildfires to the southern Plains on Friday. At least 32 people were injured, and around 40 homes were destroyed.

There was video footage of a funnel cloud after the tornado hit Howell Township, New Jersey, but it wasn’t clear if it came from the tornado or a different one.

According to the mayor, resources are going to be beyond their means as a lengthy process of cleaning up will take in one of the hardest hit areas.

Next door, Tennessee reported the highest death toll with 15 weather-related fatalities confirmed over the weekend, including 9 deaths in a single county, McNairy County.

A major disaster declaration was issued by President Joe Biden for Arkansas ahead of a trip by the FEMA administrator to assess the damage.

The city of Little Rock, Arkansas was hit by a tornado that wreaked havoc with over 2,200 structures being destroyed.

“From the time our first responders rushed to help their friends and neighbors, to now with the help of volunteers, friends and family, we have rallied as a city to recover and begin to rebuild,” the Little Rock mayor tweeted.

According to CNN, the tornado destroyed Teresa Blankenship’s house and flipped over her car.

The historic Readyville Mill and the US Post Office were destroyed, as well as numerous homes along one street, in a tornado that ripped through the area early Saturday morning.

The destruction of structures in Whiteland, Iowa, is a wake up cry for severe weather expected at the Illinois Department of Meteorology

In Whiteland, Indiana, residents spent hours Sunday trying to salvage what they could from the wreckage of destroyed homes. They were looking for wedding dresses, high school diplomas, keys, wallet and other items.

One resident told WTHR that he and his friends were searching for what could be extricated from the destroyed room where the wall collapsed. “By looking at it, they’re lucky they made it out alive.”

“We heard whistles like a train. It was just roaring. Our ears had a bad pressure and we had to put our hands over them. Everybody was running to the basement and we got down there, I heard glass shattering,” one Sullivan resident told WTHR. “When we came back up everything was just gone.”

A Level 4 out of 5 was issued by the Storm Prediction Center for a part of eastern Iowa, northeastern Missouri and western Illinois on Tuesday.

The Mississippi Valley and into the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys are expected to experience another outbreak of severe weather on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Weather Service.