A monster storm system on Friday tore through the US South and Midwest, spawning deadly tornadoes that shredded homes and shopping centers in Arkansas, collapsed a theater roof during a heavy metal concert in Illinois and made a deadly sweep across the border into rural Indiana.
The dead included four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, Cross County Coroner Eli Long told KAIT-TV.
The storm caused three deaths in Sullivan County, Indiana, county Emergency Management Agency Director Jim Pirtle said in an e-mail early yesterday.
Photo: AFP
It damaged homes and some residents were missing in Sullivan.
At least one person was killed and more than two dozen were hurt, some critically, in the Little Rock area, authorities said.
“This was actually an incredibly devastating tornado,” witness Lara Farrar said.
She said she drove to West Little Rock and got out of her car at a blocked intersection.
“I was basically in total shock because the neighborhood had been basically completely wiped out and destroyed,” Farrar said. “Some of the buildings had the roof completely blown off.”
Officials in Pulaski County confirmed a death in North Little Rock.
The town of Wynne in northeastern Arkansas was also devastated, and officials reported two dead there, along with destroyed homes and people trapped in the debris.
Authorities said a theater roof collapsed during a tornado in Belvidere, Illinois, killing one person and injuring 28, five of them severely.
The Belvidere Police Department said the collapse occurred as a heavy storm rolled through the area and that calls began coming from the theater at 7:48pm, and the initial assessment was that a tornado had caused the damage.
The collapse occurred at the Apollo Theatre during a heavy metal concert while 260 people were in the venue, Belvidere Fire Department Chief Shawn Schadle said.
He said first responders also rescued someone from an elevator and had to grapple with downed power lines outside the theater.
Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody described the scene after the collapse as “chaos, absolute chaos.”
Gabrielle Lewellyn had just entered the theater when a portion of the ceiling collapsed.
“I was there within a minute before it came down,” she told WTVO-TV. “The winds, when I was walking up to the building, it went like from zero to a thousand within five seconds.”
There were more confirmed twisters in Iowa and wind-whipped grass fires blazed in Oklahoma, as the storm system threatened a broad swath of the country home to about 85 million people.
Additional reporting by AFP
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