NASHVILLE, Tennessee, 7 February 2008 — Dozens of tornadoes sliced across southern US states ripping apart homes and shopping malls, killing at least 52 people and injuring hundreds more, officials said yesterday.
Twenty-eight people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, and seven in Kentucky, officials in the three states said. US media reported hundreds injured, and CNN said four people were killed in Alabama. Local authorities were not immediately available to confirm that death toll.
More than 50 tornadoes touched down as a series of thunderstorms rare for the winter season rolled through the region early yesterday.
Tornado watches were still in effect as of 1500 GMT in parts of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, and the western Florida panhandle, the National Weather Service said.
In Tennessee, twisters knocked down a police radio tower, punched holes in a shopping mall, damaged a hangar at the Memphis airport, and ravaged a university campus, emergency officials said.
Overall, 149 people were injured in the state, said Julie Oaks of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
“That’ll probably be going up through out the day. We have widespread damage across the state,” she said.
Students at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, heroically rescued classmates trapped in the dead of night after two campus dormitories collapsed, said University President David Dockery.
Fifty-one students were treated in hospital, including some with extensive injuries. But no one was killed, even though 1,200 students were on campus when the twister struck.
“It’s an amazing thing,” Dockery told a press conference, somberly assessing the damage.
The campus has already been rebuilt once after a 2002 tornado caused $2.6 million in damage. Now, “we are estimating that the damage is at least 15 times what that was at that time,” he said.
Some buildings were in “complete rubble” while others were extensively harmed, he said.
“You look over there, you see these major buildings, $20 million, beautiful academic buildings, the roofs are off of them. Water damaged soaked through all three floors. It is hard to even think about,” he said.
Elsewhere in Tennessee, the Red Cross moved 50 people trapped at a retirement center in Madison County to a shelter, officials said. But a huge fire that blazed overnight at a storm-damaged gas pumping station northeast of Nashville had burned itself out. The station is part of a 6,760 km pipeline that moves gas through four southern states.
In neighboring Kentucky, three people were killed in a trailer park in Muhlenberg County, and four others died in Allen County, Buddy Rogers of the Kentucky Division of Emergency Management told reporters.
In Arkansas, the hardest-hit areas were Atkins, with four fatalities, and Gassville, with one, Arkansas emergency official Renee Preslar said.
