Violent tornadoes and high winds decimated homes, wiped out schools and toppled semitractor-trailers as a monster storm that also produced dust storms and icy conditions killed at least 33 people across the central and southern U.S.
Missouri resident Dakota Henderson said he and others rescuing trapped neighbors found five bodies scattered in the debris Friday night outside what remained of his aunt’s house in hard-hit Wayne County. Scattered twisters killed at least a dozen people in the state, authorities said.
“It was a very rough deal last night,” Henderson said Saturday not far from the splintered home from which he said they rescued his aunt through a window of the only room left standing. “It’s really disturbing for what happened to the people, the casualties last night.”
The dynamic storm, earning an unusual “high risk” designation from weather forecasters, was blamed for deadly dust storms in the nation’s midsection, icy winter weather in northern parts of the country and severe thunderstorms on Sunday, including on the West Coast.
Authorities were still sifting through massive tornado damage. Coroner Jim Akers of Butler County in Missouri described the “unrecognizable home” where one man was killed as “just a debris field.”
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced six people died in three counties and three more people were missing late Saturday as storms moved further east into Alabama, where damaged homes and impassable roads were reported.
Officials confirmed three deaths in Arkansas, where Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency. In Alabama, Dallas County Sheriff Michael L. Granthum said there was one storm-related fatality in that county.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp also declared an emergency in anticipation of the storm’s shift eastward. Early Sunday morning, the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency used its social media accounts to repost a National Weather Service tornado watch for parts of southeast Georgia.
Dust storms spurred by the system’s early high winds claimed almost a dozen lives on Friday. Eight people died in a Kansas highway pileup involving at least 50 vehicles, according to the state highway patrol. Authorities said three people also were killed in car crashes during a dust storm in Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle.
