Tornado death toll hits 20 in U.S.
Pastor Dale Morgan
Saturday March 3, 2:35 AM Reuters
*Tornado death toll hits 20 in U.S.*
By Karen Jacobs
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Tornadoes across the southern United States killed
at least 20 people as they tore up a hospital and high school where
students huddled for shelter, authorities said on Friday, a day after
the rampage.
The toll from Thursday's severe weather could rise. The U.S. Coast Guard
said six people were missing Friday after their 23-foot (7-metre) vessel
began taking on water in stormy seas off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,
on Thursday night.
The tornadoes killed nine people in Georgia, where a hospital was hit,
and 10 people in two southern Alabama towns, officials said.
The powerful storms, which levelled scores of homes while flipping cars
into the air and leaving thousands stranded without power, also killed a
young girl in a mobile home in Missouri, the officials said.
In Georgia, two died in the town of Americus when the Sumter Regional
Hospital was hit by a tornado, and six died, including two children, in
hard-hit Baker County. The ninth fatality was in Taylor County, a north
of Americus, said state emergency management official Michael Parker.
"I was shocked. It was worse than I had feared," Georgia Gov. Sonny
Perdue told reporters in Americus after he had toured damage from the
storms. "It's just a blessing that we didn't have more fatalities."
Tara Emnett, an official at the Enterprise mayor's office in Alabama,
said all but one of the nine victims there were students at the high
school, a shredded building left surrounded by broken trees and
overturned cars.
Another fatality in Enterprise occurred in a residence, Emnett said.
Emergency management officials confirmed at least one storm-related
death elsewhere in Alabama, in Wilcox County.
STUDENTS IN HALLWAYS
The high school's students had been assembled in hallways when the storm
hit, in line with emergency procedures, said Coffee County Emergency
Management director John Tallas, whose area of responsibility includes
Enterprise.
"They were in the hallway of the school which typically is the most
structurally sound part of the building," Tallas told CBS television's
"Early Show."
Students interviewed on the program said the hallway's roof caved in
soon after they gathered there.
"I just sat down. The next thing I knew windows and stuff were busting
everywhere," student Robert Humphrey said.
"When the tornado first hit it got real loud," Brent Smith, another
student, told CNN. "When it quieted down you could hear people calling
for help and all ... It was real chaotic."
Doctors at Medical Centre Enterprise treated more than 50 people for
lacerations, broken bones and other injuries, hospital chief executive
Jeff Brannon said. Most were hurt at the school.
Hospital workers had rushed to move patients away from the windows as
sirens screamed out a warning moments before a dark funnel cloud roared
past. Hospital windows burst and cars were pummelled in the hospital
parking lot, Brannon said.
The same weather system that triggered the tornadoes hit the upper
Midwest, causing blizzards. Storm-related traffic accidents were
reported in Wisconsin and North Dakota and air travel disrupted across a
wide area.
U.S. President George W. Bush said he would visit devastated parts of
both Alabama and Georgia on Saturday.
Thursday's storms came just a month after a tornado killed about 20
people in central Florida.
The height of the tornado season in the United States does not begin
until May, but winter tornadoes are common in years which experience the
El Nino phenomenon -- an unusual warming of Pacific waters that can
bring torrential rain to some parts of the globe and extreme drought to
others.
(Additional reporting by Verna Gates in Birmingham, Ala., and Diane
Bartz in Washington)