For the second time in a week, tornadoes have brought death and destruction to the United States. At least 26 people died as a result of violent hurricanes, local media reported over the weekend, citing the police and rescue services. There were also dozens injured.
Around 100,000 households and companies were still without electricity on Sunday due to storm damage, according to data from the website "poweroutage.us". Media spoke of a rare "monster storm system" that stretched from the southern United States to the Great Lakes region in the north.
The storm came out of nowhere
"I've never seen anything like it," reported Melissa Keller from the state of Tennessee, where police said nine people died in destroyed houses. It sounded like a train suddenly rushing through town, she told The Tennessean newspaper. Other eyewitnesses also reported that it had been totally quiet shortly before, then suddenly deafeningly loud.
She took shelter in the bathroom, Keller continued. Her house was largely spared. "But the building there was moved 15 feet (about 4.5 meters) by the storm." Pictures and videos showed piles of rubble, covered houses and downed trees outside her door and elsewhere in the affected areas. Cars lying on their roofs testified to the violence of the storm.
Five other fatalities were reported from Arkansas and four from Illinois. People also died in the storms in Indiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Delaware, it was said. According to the weather service, more than 50 cyclones that could be classified as tornadoes were counted in seven states, especially in the south and midwest of the country. The final classification will follow in a few days.
In the small town of Belvidere, Illinois, the roof of an event building partially collapsed during a heavy metal concert on Friday evening. According to the fire department, at least one person was killed and 28 others were injured. At the time of the collapse, a storm was raging with gusts of up to 145 kilometers per hour. About 260 people were in the sold-out hall.
"It happened in about five seconds"
Hours earlier, a tornado hit the town of Little Rock and the surrounding area, Arkansas. "I'm grateful to be alive," a supermarket worker told KATV about the devastation. "It happened in about five seconds. It came and boomed. I went outside, it was crazy. People had blood all over their faces."
Four fatalities were reported from the village of Wynne, around 150 kilometers away, where some houses were leveled. "The city was practically split in half by the damage from east to west," Mayor Jennifer Hobbs told CNN.
Arkansas' governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency in response to the damage in the state and mobilized 100 members of the National Guard to help with rescue and clean-up efforts. The White House said on Saturday that US President Joe Biden had spoken to Sanders, as well as the mayors of Little Rock and Wynne. He was also in contact with the civil protection authority Fema.
Natural disasters as a consequence of climate change
A tornado killed at least 26 people in the states of Mississippi and Alabama just a week ago. Experts attribute the increase in natural disasters in the USA - storms, floods and forest fires - to the consequences of climate change. However, there is no end in sight to the storms: Given the dry conditions in the west and hot and humid conditions in the east, dangerous storms can be expected again from Tuesday, weather expert Victor Gensini from Northern Illinois University told the USA Today newspaper.
On Friday, Biden and his wife Jill visited the small town of Rolling Fork, Mississippi, which had been particularly hard hit by the storm. The Bidens got an idea of the destruction in the 2,000-inhabitant community and met, among other things, the mayor of the city and affected residents. "You are not alone," Biden said amid the rubble of destroyed homes and uprooted trees. "The American people will stand by you. They will help you get through here - and so will I."
