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.
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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., where crews rescued nine students trapped in the rubble.
Arkansas and Tennessee were the hardest hit, with Arkansas reporting 13 dead and Tennessee 30. Here in Atkins, 50 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 as his family 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 that he would visit 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 20 minutes and they pop back up,” Ms. Preslar said. “There’s no signs yet of this having ever come off the ground.”
On Wednesday, the storm, a bit tamer, moved on toward Ohio, the Great Lakes and the East Coast.
Tornado experts said there was no evidence that the deadly storms were related to global warming or anything other than the clash of contrasting cold and warm air masses that usually precedes such events.
Harold Brooks, a meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said there had 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. According to the laboratory’s archives, 134 people died in tornadoes in February that year.
The number of deaths is as much a function of luck and location as the number of tornadoes, Dr. Brooks added. He noted that the biggest midwinter outbreak of tornadoes on record, 134 on Jan. 21 and 22, 1999, caused nine deaths.
In Jackson, Matt Taylor, a junior at Union University, was scouring the campus Wednesday for his Jeep after a close call that left him with staples in his scalp and a bandages on his leg.
On Tuesday night, Mr. Taylor hunkered down in Waters Commons, a residence hall, when the sirens went off, but when a door blew open he was sucked outside, bringing with him a gum-ball 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 region, residents said they owed their lives to 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 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 late Tuesday afternoon. A tornado residents described as a massive black wall of wind and debris tore a six-mile swath through Atkins, a rural, agricultural town of about 3,300, killing four people and injuring at least eight others, including a deputy who suffered a broken ankle.
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Major Dillard W. Bradley, chief deputy of the Pope County Sheriff’s department, said 60 to 80 buildings “were completely blown away.”
Several one-story, wooden houses along Highway 64, one of the town’s main streets, were torn off their foundations and reduced to rubble. The few trees left standing looked as if they had been run though 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,” Ms. Martin 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,” Mr. Veverka said, his eyes filling. “I know it sounds like a cliché but you just never think,” he paused, biting his lip. “It took me 10 years to have something.”
His wife, Kim, marveled over a fragile glass Christmas ornament, the only one of a collection that had survived intact. “We’re looking for little miracles,” she said. “We keep finding them.”
Ms. 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 moved east, spewing rain and hail as it swept parts of northern Mississippi and Alabama, virtually all of Tennessee and parts of Kentucky. Four people died in Alabama, and seven in Kentucky.
“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 reports of tornadoes, but has not 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 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,” Mr. 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.”