Arkansas.– Storms that spawned possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 21 people in small towns and large cities in the southern and north-central United States, as well as leaving a path of destruction through the Arkansas capital and collapsing the ceiling of a packed concert hall in Illinois.
Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states destroyed homes and businesses, downed trees and leveled neighborhoods across a wide swath of the country. There were seven deaths in one Tennessee county, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, four in Illinois and three in nearby Sullivan, Indiana.
Other deaths were reported in Alabama and Mississippi from the storms that struck the country Friday through Saturday night, and one more in Little Rock, Arkansas, where the mayor said more than 2,000 properties were in the path of a tornado. .
Shocked residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke up yesterday to the news that the high school’s roof was smashed and windows were blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground. Broken walls, windows, and ceilings were seen in all kinds of houses and businesses.
There were already workers using chainsaws to cut downed trees and bulldozers moving remnants of destroyed structures. Utility companies were working to restore electricity. Groups of volunteers met to plan the day.
Seven people died in McNairy County, Tennessee, east of Memphis and bordering Mississippi, Adamsville Mayor David Leckner said.
“Most of the damage occurred in houses and residential areas,” he added. Although it seemed that all the people had already been located, there were door-to-door teams to make sure.
In Belvidere, Illinois, some of the 260 attendees at a heavy metal concert at the Apollo Theater pulled a 50-year-old man from the rubble after part of the roof collapsed. When the emergency teams arrived, he was already dead. According to authorities, another 40 people were injured, two of them seriously.
“Someone was pulled out of the rubble, I sat down with him, held his hand and said, ‘everything is going to be okay.’ I didn’t know what else to do,” Gabrielle Lewellyn, a concertgoer, told WTVO-TV.
The venue’s Facebook page said the bands scheduled to perform were Morbid Angel, Crypta, Skeletal Remains and Revocation.
Clint Lamb, the mayor of Sullivan, Indiana, told a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 people was “essentially unrecognizable at this point” and that several people were pulled from the rubble during the night.
In the Little Rock metropolitan area, at least one person was killed and more than 20 injured, some seriously, authorities said. Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said 2,100 homes and businesses were in the tornado’s path, but no assessment had been made on how many were damaged.
Also suspected was that a tornado killed a woman in Madison County, Alabama, County Officer Mac McCutcheon said.
In Pontotoc County, in northern Mississippi, authorities confirmed one death and four injuries.
