Tornadoes Kill at Least 23 in Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia
Posted on: Sunday, 11 May 2008, 18:00 CDT
RACINE, Mo. -- The area around Bill and Jane Lant's destroyed businesses was strewn this morning with wedding gowns, tuxedos and other apparel.
Surveying the wreckage of the bridal shop and the feed store the couple operated near Racine, the Lants gave thanks that the tornado struck when it did, just about 15 minutes after the businesses closed. Otherwise the death toll from the twisters that struck Oklahoma and Missouri on Saturday evening could have been much worse.
"It's one of those things you see on TV that happens to somebody else," Jane Lant said. "It's totally unbelievable.
"What we lost is nothing compared to those people who lost their lives."
Emergency crews still were assessing the damage from the string of killer tornados that left at least 23 dead, including seven in Oklahoma, 14 in Missouri and two on Sunday morning in Georgia.
"We're still looking for people and sorting through the rubble," a dispatcher for the Ottawa County Sheriff's Department in Miami, Okla., said Sunday.
The storm system spawned at least eight tornados, some as powerful as EF3, according to the National Weather Service. The Enhanced Fujita scale goes up to EF5 and rates an EF3 tornado as capable of severe damage and 165 mph winds.
"Our early estimate is it is potentially greater than EF3 damage," Megan Terry, a meteorologist with the weather service in Springfield, Mo., said Sunday. "Surveys are ongoing at this time."
Weather officials based in Tulsa reported at least eight tornados in the northeastern corner of the state, and Missouri officials reported 15 sightings, although some of those may have been the same tornado.
There also was a report of hail over four inches in diameter in Baxter Springs, Kan., near the Missouri and Oklahoma borders.
Federal authorities offered emergency assistance to the affected states.
"The federal government will be moving hard to help," President Bush said Sunday. "I'll be in touch with the governors and offer all of the federal assistance we can."
Near Lant's Bridal and Lant's Feed, several motorists had pulled off the road when the heavy rain and hail struck about 5:15 p.m. Saturday, and some vehicles were blown 200 yards or more into a pasture. Four people in one vehicle and one person in a second vehicle died, Bill Lant said.
Keith Stammer, public information officer for the Newton County Office of Emergency Services, said it was unclear how many people died in which vehicles. Some victims also died in buildings.
As of Sunday morning there were no people still reported missing, Stammer said.
Stammer said that in Missouri, 12 fatalities were reported in Newton County, one in Jasper County and one in Barry County. Nineteen people were hospitalized in Newton County, he said. He did not know the extent of their injuries.
About two miles to the east of the Lants' stores, the tornado flattened several homes and buildings.
One Missouri family escaped serious injury by huddling in the corner of their two-story barn. Ron Cotten said he, his wife, son and daughter, and two young grandchildren ran from the house to the pole barn as two huge black clouds approached at ground level, converged and began twirling as they neared the buildings
"All I know is that everything started going and flying," Cotten said
The family escaped injury except for one of the toddlers, who suffered a concussion when struck in the face by a hail stone the size of a baseball, he said.
Asked how he thought his family survived, Cotton said: "It was God. It was God."
Crews and search dogs searched for survivors or bodies Sunday morning in piles of debris in Picher, Okla., where seven people died. In the once-bustling mining center that had dwindled to about 800, officials held out hope that they wouldn't find any more bodies.
Residents said the tornado created a surreal scene as it tore through town late Saturday afternoon, injuring 150 people, overturning cars, throwing mattresses and twisted metal high into the canopy of trees.
"I swear I could see cars floating," said Herman Hernandez, 68. "And there was a roar, louder and louder."
In Picher, some houses were reduced to their foundations, others lost several walls. In one home, the tornado knocked down a bedroom wall but left clothes hanging neatly in a closet.
A Best Western hotel sign was blown miles before coming to rest against a post. At one home, a basketball hoop planted in concrete had its metal support twisted so the rim hung only about 3 feet above ground.
The twister was the deadliest in Oklahoma since a May 3, 1999, twister that killed 44 people in the Oklahoma City area.
After pounding Oklahoma and Missouri, the storm system rolled across the southern tier of states.
Heavy damage was reported Sunday morning in Georgia, where at least two people were killed in Dublin, authorities said. Weather officials had not yet confirmed whether the storms produced any tornadoes.
Like so many tornadoes, those that hit Saturday were particularly devastating to modular, or mobile, homes. Four people died in two mobile homes and two more were thrown into a field and seriously injured, said Dan Degen, who lives in rural Racine.
He found the bodies in the field and called 911. Degen escaped injury in his own conventional-but-basement-free home by taking shelter in a safe room with 8-inch concrete walls that he had installed about a year ago.
Down the road, Verda McKenna had no idea what had become of her 16-foot-by-80-foot mobile home. All that remained after the tornado were the cinder blocks her home had rested on.
"My whole life," she said, "gone."
McKenna, who was not at home when the twister hit, spent Sunday morning comforting her dog, Chelsea, a 12-year-old chow that had been leashed on the deck and was swept away in the storm. It survived but seemed to be suffering internal injuries.
Another local resident, Sharon Geary, also had her home disappear in the tornado. Part of the modular home was discovered about a quarter mile away in the debris of her mother-in-law's home, which was also destroyed.
"Our house is wrapped up in her house," said Geary, who was away from home when the storm hit. "If we had been in it, we'd be dead.... The house is everywhere."
She was flummoxed by the disappearance of a 50- to 100-pound steel safe. It contained her daughter's savings and sundry family papers.
"We need a little miracle to find that," she said.
Koral Chenoweth survived the tornado by crouching in a small crawl space her husband had installed in a main-floor closet because their house does not have a basement. She was alone when the tornado hit.
"I didn't expect to see the sky when I opened the door and looked out," but the tornado had peeled away half of her two-story home, she said. "I didn't expect the magnitude of the damage, that's for sure."
The storm toppled a large stone and cinder block fireplace in the great room of her home.
About a mile away, her 15-year-old son, Josh Chenoweth, was taking shelter in the basement of a friend's home when the tornado hit.
"The house started falling in on us, rocks started falling on us," said Josh, who huddled with three children and two adults. He described the experience as scary. "It will stick with me."
Authorities have not yet confirmed the specific cause of any of the storm deaths.
Yet one woman reportedly died after getting a flat tire near the Lants' stores. A woman, Susan Roberts, lived next to the store and had noticed the driver with the tire problem when she left in search of a refuge from the storm.
When Roberts returned after the tornado she learned the woman had taken shelter in another car Roberts had left behind. That woman was killed when the storm mangled the car, Roberts said.
"That's the part I'm having a hard time dealing with," she said. "Someone died in my car."
Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)
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