Governor Of Tennessee Says Storm is Wrath of God

[Kosherboy]

Tennessee governor on tornadoes: 'The wrath of God...'

2/7/2008 7:43:46 AM

New York Times News Service
ATKINS, Ark. -- Residents in five Southern states rose Wednesday to widespread clusters of destruction caused by an unusually ferocious winter tornado system. At least 54 people were killed and scores more were injured.
Many had spent a harrowing Tuesday night punctuated by breaking glass and warning sirens as the tornadoes tossed trailer homes into the air, collapsed the roof of a Sears store in Memphis, whittled away half a Caterpillar plant near Oxford, Miss., and shredded dorms at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., leaving crews to rescue nine students trapped in the rubble.
Arkansas and Tennessee were the hardest hit, with Arkansas reporting 13 dead and Tennessee 30. Here in Atkins, 70 miles northwest of Little Rock, a middle-aged couple and their 11-year-old daughter died when their house was wiped out by a direct hit, and in northwestern Alabama the bodies of another family of three were found 50 yards from the foundation of their ruined home.
In Macon County, Tenn., a 74-year-old man whose trailer was destroyed died in view of his family as they waited for an ambulance to navigate debris-strewn roads. Thirty-five injuries were reported in Gassville, a small community in Baxter County, Ark., that was almost totally leveled by the storm.
"The wrath of God is the only way I can describe it," Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee said after surveying the damage by helicopter. "I'm used to seeing roofs off houses; houses blown over. These houses were down to their foundations, stripped clean."
The governor said 1,000 houses in Tennessee were destroyed. President Bush announced he would head to the state on Friday to view the damage.
Much of the havoc was wreaked by rare "long-track" tornadoes, which stay on the ground for distances of 30 to 50 miles. One tornado in Arkansas seems to have burned a path through five counties, said Renee Preslar, the public education coordinator for the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management.
"Normally, tornadoes touch down and they're on the ground for twenty minutes and they pop back up," Preslar said. "There's no signs yet of this having ever come off the ground."
On Wednesday the storm, a bit tamer, moved on to Ohio and the Great Lakes and was expected to reach the East Coast on Wednesday night.
Tornado experts said there was no evidence that the deadly outbreak was related to global warming or anything other than the clash of contrasting cold and warm air masses that usually precedes such events.
Dr. Harold Brooks, a meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said there has been a long history of midwinter storms exacting a deadly toll. The most lethal February was in 1971, when tornadoes ripped across Louisiana and Mississippi. Altogether, according to the severe storms center's archives, 134 people died in tornadoes in February that year.
The number of deaths is as much a function of chance and location as the number of tornadoes, he added. Brooks noted that the biggest midwinter outbreak of twisters on record, on Jan. 21-22, 1999, saw 134 tornadoes altogether, but nine deaths.
In Jackson, Matt Taylor, a junior at Union University, was scouring the campus Wednesday for his missing jeep after a close call that left him with staples in his scalp and a bandaged leg.
On Tuesday night Taylor had hunkered down in Waters Commons, a residence building, when the sirens went off, but when a door blew open he was sucked outside, bringing with him a gumball machine he had grabbed hold of. "By the time I got back in, it exploded," he said of the building.
Although 80 percent of the residential section of the campus was demolished or severely damaged, there were no fatalities, for which officials credited the college's disaster plan. Across the Southeast, residents said they owed their lives to early warning systems.
"I've lived in Champaign, Ill., and in southern Mississippi, and neither place had a decent early-warning system like we do here in Moulton." said Elaina Peyton, who now resides in Moulton, the county seat of Lawrence County, Ala. "We heard the sirens last night at about 2 a.m. and so our daughter knew to come downstairs and we knew that something was happening. The television went out around 3:30 or so and we just followed the news on the radio."
The destruction began in Arkansas in late afternoon on Tuesday. A tornado that residents described as a massive black wall of wind and debris tore a six-mile swath through the center of Atkins, a rural, agricultural town with a population of about 3,300, killing four people and injuring at least eight others, including one deputy who suffered a broken ankle.
Major Dillard W. Bradley, chief deputy of the Pope County sheriff's department, said 60 to 80 structures "were completely blown away."
A cluster of one-story, wooden houses along Highway 64, one of Atkins' main streets, were torn off their foundations and reduced to rubble. The few trees left standing looked as if they had been run though the chewing blades of a wood chipper, limbs whittled to bare spikes, trunks stripped of bark.
Cyerice Martin, 41, gingerly picked her way through the pile of debris that was all that remained of her twin sister's house.
"The neighbors saw it hit this house and they said it just exploded," she said.
Next door, Pat Veverka, a truck driver, sifted through the remains of his one-story wooden house. "I don't know where to start," Veverka said, his eyes filling with tears. "I know it sounds like a cliche, but you just never think," he paused, biting his lip. "It took me ten years to have something."
His wife, Kim, marveled over a fragile glass Christmas ornament, the only one of a collection that had survived the storm intact. "We're looking for little miracles," she said. "We keep finding them."
Kim Veverka's daughter cooed in surprise at the ornament, taking it in her gloved hands to examine it. As she turned it over, it fell, smashing to bits.
From Arkansas the storm system, spewing rain and hail, moved in an east-northeast direction, sweeping parts of northern Mississippi and Alabama, which had four deaths, virtually all of Tennessee, and parts of Kentucky, where seven people died.
"We're talking about winds in excess of 150 miles an hour," said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist at the Storm Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The center recorded 73 eyewitness reports of tornadoes, but has not yet determined how many were duplicates, he said.
In Macon County, near the Kentucky state line, boats and cars were strewn like jackstraws and neat brick homes were reduced to piles of rubble. "It went from one county line to the other," said Randall Kirby, director of emergency services for the county.
Ray Story said the twister left no trace of the trailer occupied by his 74-year-old uncle. The family found him, nearly naked, on the ground nearby. They called 911 and waited, in vain, for help. "He lived a pretty good while after we found him, maybe an hour and a half to two hours," Story said. "He was tore up pretty bad."
Helen Hesson said she took shelter in the bathtub when the tornado struck, until the bathroom window blew out. She moved to a closet, but even then the wind seemed to be trying to pry her out. "I really thought I was gone," she said. "I couldn't get the door closed. It was just scooping in right after me. It seemed like it lasted two hours."
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[Rebel Hog]

My nephew, wife and 5 children live in Nashville 7 miles from the path, but 3 members of his church lost their homes completely! Please keep them in prayer, they lost everything!

[Kosherboy]

Will do Rebel