'We said goodbye to each other': Survivors describe deadly 'supercell' tornado

A 'supercell' storm, which spawned dozens of tornadoes, has killed at least 26 people in America's South and Midwest.

The storm tore a path through the Arkansas capital, collapsing the roof of a packed concert venue in Illinois and stunning people throughout the region on Saturday with the damage’s scope.

Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states destroyed homes and businesses, splintered trees and laid waste to neighbourhoods across a broad swath of the country. The dead included at least nine in one Tennessee county, four in the small town of Wynne, Arkansas, three in Sullivan, Indiana, and four in Illinois.

Other deaths from the storms that hit on Friday night into Saturday were reported in Alabama and Mississippi, along with one near Little Rock, Arkansas, where city officials said more than 2,600 buildings were in a tornado’s path.

Wynne resident Ashley Macmillan said she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed. They were “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead”, she said. A falling tree seriously damaged their home, but they were unhurt.

“We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes rattling. And then it just got calm,” she said.

Also in Wynne, a high school had its roof shredded and windows blown out. Huge trees lay on the ground, their stumps reduced to nubs. Broken walls, windows and roofs pocked homes and businesses.

Such “intense supercell thunderstorms” are only expected to become more common, especially in Southern states, as temperatures rise around the world, a study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society has said.

Supercells are nature’s ultimate storms, so-called “Finger of God” whoppers that are “the dominant producers of significant tornadoes and hail,” said lead author Walker Ashley, a professor of meteorology and disaster geography at Northern Illinois University. Tall, anvil-shaped and sky-filling, supercells have a rotating powerful updraft of wind and can last for hours.

Nine people died in Tennessee’s McNairy County, east of Memphis, according to Patrick Sheehan, director the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.

Governor Bill Lee drove to the county on Saturday to tour the destruction and comfort residents. He said the storm capped the “worst” week of his time as governor, coming days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people including a family friend, whose funeral he and his wife, Maria, attended earlier in the day.

“It’s terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Governor Lee said. “But it looks like your community has done what Tennessean communities do, and that is rally and respond.”

In Memphis, police spokesman Christopher Williams said via email late on Saturday that there were three deaths believed to be weather-related: two children and an adult who died when a tree fell on a house.

Tennessee officials warned that the same weather conditions from Friday night are expected to return Tuesday.

In Belvidere, Illinois, part of the roof of the Apollo Theatre collapsed as about 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert. A 50-year-old man was pulled from the rubble.

“I sat with him and I held his hand and I was (telling him), ‘It’s going to be OK.’ I didn’t really know much else what to do,” concertgoer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.

The man was dead by the time emergency workers arrived. Officials said 40 others were hurt, including two with life-threatening injuries.

In Crawford County, Illinois, three people were killed and eight injured when a tornado hit around New Hebron, said Bill Burke, the county board chair.

Sheriff Bill Rutan said 60 to 100 families were displaced.

We’ve had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house is collapsed on top of them, but luckily they had that safe space to go to,” Rutan said at a news conference.

That tornado was not far from where three people died in Indiana’s Sullivan County, about 95 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is essentially unrecognisable right now” and several people were rescued overnight. There were reports of as many as 12 people injured, he said.

In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than 50 were hurt, some critically. The National Weather Service said that tornado was a high-end EF3 twister with wind speeds up to 165 mph and a path as long as 25 miles.

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard. On Saturday, Ms Sanders requested a major disaster declaration from President Joe Biden to support recovery efforts with federal resources.

The storms struck just hours after MR Biden visited Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where tornadoes last week destroyed parts of town.

More than 530,000 homes and businesses were without power as of midday Saturday, over 200,000 of them in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us.

The sprawling storm system also brought wildfires to the southern Plains, with authorities in Oklahoma reporting nearly 100 of them Friday. At least 32 people were said to be injured, and more than 40 homes destroyed.

The storms also caused blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest.

A threat of tornadoes and hail remained for the Northeast including in parts of Pennsylvania and New York.

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