27 Killed: Tornadoes Wreak Havoc in the US

On Sunday, people in the South and Midwest parts of the United States were trying to figure out how much damage was done by storms that brought many tornadoes along with them, leading to at least 27 deaths. Before that, those same storms had caused havoc on Saturday when they reached places like Arkansas capital and an Illinois concert hall, making people shocked and surprised by the intensity of what happened. Now these storms are heading towards Northeast America.

The White House said on Sunday that it will give help, including money, to repair any damage from disasters after Joe Biden concluded that many parts of America are in bad shape. Arkansas’s governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has asked for the National Guard to come and do the job.

Strong winds called tornadoes have smashed and ruined homes, trees, and other buildings in 11 different states. It may take days to figure out how many tornadoes happened during the last few days.

The National Weather Service sent out teams on Sunday to investigate reports of tornados appearing in New Jersey and Delaware. The severe weather caused many homes to get destroyed, roads to close down and even led to one person passing away after their house was heavily damaged by the storm Saturday night in Bridgeville, Delaware State Police reported.

At least twenty-six people died when heavy storms hit some areas in the US last week. Nine of them were in Tennessee, four in a small town called Wynne (Arkansas), three in Sullivan (Indiana), and four in Illinois. People also died in Alabama, Mississippi, and near Little Rock (Arkansas). In Little Rock, close to 26 hundred buildings were damaged by a tornado.

Residents in Wynne, a city with 8,000 people living 50 miles away from Memphis, Tennessee were shocked when they woke up on Saturday to see the roof and windows of their high school destroyed. The trees were lying all over the ground, and their trunks had been cut down close to the roots.

Ashley Macmillan and her family were so scared when the tornado came. They even said goodbye to each other, thinking that this would be the end for them all. But luckily, their home was only damaged by a falling tree and nothing more – they survived!

Lots of people then got to work with chainsaws and bulldozers in order to get rid of broken pieces from the tornado. Eventually, power was restored in some neighborhoods too which means their homes are getting back to normal.

Nine people sadly passed away in McNairy County, Tennessee, near Memphis. The governor of Tennessee, Bill Lee travelled to the area to check out the destruction and encourage those affected by this hard time. He said that the storm made it the “worst” week since he became governor, especially coming right after a school shooting in Nashville that took 6 lives – which 1 of them was even his family friend whose funeral he and his wife had attended just earlier!

Lee said that the events happening in their local area were terrible, but it looks like people in Tennessee are doing their best to help out. Jeffrey Day called his daughter when he saw on the news that Adamsville was being hit. When she answered her phone, she was screaming because she and her two-year-old son were hiding in a closet during the storm.

“Daddy, what should I do?”, his daughter kept asking him. Day couldn’t answer her because he was filled with emotions.

Once the storm passed, his daughter looked for safety and went to a nearby family.

Police spokesman in Memphis, Christopher Williams stated that 3 people were killed due to the bad weather: two children and an adult who passed away when a tree fell on their house.

The weather in Tennessee is going to be the same as it was on Friday.

In Belvidere, Illinois, an Apollo Theatre roof collapsed during a metal concert with 260 people inside. A 50-year-old man was sadly pulled from the wreckage and died later. And 40 other people were injured, two of them seriously.

In Crawford County, Illinois, a tornado caused three people to die and eight people to get hurt. The town of New Hebron was affected greatly by the storm. Sheriff Bill Rutan said around 100 families had to leave their homes. In addition, emergency crews have rescued some people from their basements because the houses were destroyed on top of them. They were lucky enough to be in safe places when it happened.

Nearby, Indiana’s Sullivan County had three people die from a tornado that happened in the area. There were also some people who were rescued and around 12 injured. Mayor Lamb was very surprised that there weren’t more human-related issues. He mentioned that the whole recovery process would be very long.

A terrible tornado recently came through the Little Rock area, leaving one person dead and more than 50 hurt – some very badly. The National Weather Service has said it was a super-strong tornado with wind speeds as fast as 165 mph and that it had an over 25 mile long path.

Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was having lunch at home when it passed by and he hid in his laundry room until it was over. When he stepped out after it passed, he realized his house had been mostly destroyed.

He described Saturday, “It looks like there’s nothing but the blue sky all around me.”

A woman died in Alabama due to a probable tornado and five people were hurt in Mississippi by another one.

These storms took place shortly after President Biden visited Rolling Fork, Mississippi – a place where some places got destroyed by tornadoes last week.

The big storm that just passed caused lots of wildfires, which hurt 32 people and destroyed 40 homes. People all around the country wrote reports about the event, including Kimberlee Kruesi in Adamsville, Tennessee, Harm Venhuizen in Belvidere, Illinois, Corey Williams in Detroit and Ron Todt in Philadelphia.