Obama to visit tornado victims in US south

US president Barack Obama to visit Tuscaloosa in Alabama after storms kill 300 across seven southern states President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, are to visit Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to meet victims of the storms that killed 300 people and devastated entire neighbourhoods in seven southern US states. As emergency crews searched rubble for survivors, Obama described the loss of life as “heartbreaking” and called the damage to homes and businesses “nothing short of catastrophic”. He promised strong federal support for rebuilding. Robert Bentley, the governor of Alabama, said his state had confirmed 210 deaths. There were also 33 deaths in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, five in Virginia and one in Kentucky. Hundreds if not thousands of people were injured, 600 in Tuscaloosa alone. Some of the worst damage was in Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the university of Alabama. The storms destroyed the city’s emergency management centre, so the Bryant-Denny stadium was turned into a makeshift headquarters. School officials said two students were killed. Over several days, the powerful tornadoes – of which there were more than 160 reported in total – combined with storms to cut a swath of destruction heading west to east. “I think this is going to rank up as one of the worst tornado outbreaks in US history,” said Craig Fugate, director of the federal emergency management agency. There were still unconfirmed reports late on Thursday of “entire towns flattened” in northern parts of the state, Fugate said. “We’re still trying to get people through rescues and locate the missing.” It was the worst US natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which killed up to 1,800 people. The US national weather service said the storms were the most ferocious some of their forecasters had ever seen, and the deadliest since tornadoes in 1974 killed 315 people in the region. Meteorologists said some of the tornadoes that hit this week had winds of around 100mph and stayed on the ground for a few miles. “There’s a pretty good chance some of these were a mile wide, on the ground for tens of miles and had wind speeds over 200mph,” said research meteorologist Harold Brooks at the storm prediction centre . While rescue officials searched for survivors, some who sheltered in bathtubs, closets and basements told of miraculous escapes. “I made it. I got in a closet, put a pillow over my face and held on for dear life because it started sucking me up,” said Angela Smith of Tuscaloosa. In Phil Campbell, a small town of 1,000 in north-west Alabama where 26 people died, a shop, petrol stations and clinic were destroyed by a tornado that the mayor, Jerry Mays, estimated was half a mile wide and travelled some 20 miles. “We’ve lost everything. Let’s just say it like it is,” Mays said. “I’m afraid we might have some suicides because of this.” As many as a million homes and businesses were without power, and Bentley said 2,000 National Guard troops had been called up to help. The governors of Mississippi and Georgia also issued emergency declarations for parts of their states. “We can’t control when or where a terrible storm may strike, but we can control how we respond to it,” Obama said. “And I want every American who has been affected by this disaster to know that the federal government will do everything we can to help you recover and we will stand with you as you rebuild.” Bentley said forecasters did a good job alerting people, but there was only so much they can do to help people prepare. Carbin noted that the warning gave residents enough time to hunker down, but not enough for them to safely leave the area. “You’ve got half an hour to evacuate the north side of Tuscaloosa. How do you do that and when do you do that? Knowing there’s a tornado on the ground right now and the conditions in advance of it, you may inadvertently put people in harm’s way,” he said. The storm system spread destruction from Texas to New York, where dozens of roads were flooded or washed out. Insurance experts were wary of estimating damage costs but believed they would run into the billions of dollars, with the worst impact concentrated in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. Natural disasters and extreme weather United States Barack Obama Mark Tran guardian.co.uk

Posted by on April 29, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.