(CNN) — The death toll rose to 32 on Sunday after a series of ferocious storms and tornadoes devastated communities in the southern and midwestern United States, while parts of the southern Plains braced for their own round of evil. time.
The outbreak that swept the country on Friday generated more than 50 reports of tornadoes in at least seven states flattening homes and businesses, ripping roofs off buildings, splintering trees and launching vehicles into the air.
Deaths were confirmed across a wide swath of states, with multiple fatalities reported in Arkansas, Indiana and Tennessee, where the statewide death toll rose to 12 on Sunday after authorities confirmed three more deaths in Memphis: two children and one an adult were found dead after police responded to calls about trees falling on homes, according to a news release from the Memphis Police Department.
Seven others died in McNairy County, Tennessee, where the storm “went completely across our county,” Sheriff Guy Buck told CNN late Saturday as authorities searched collapsed buildings. At least four people were killed in Wynne, Arkansas – a community about 50 miles (80 km) west of the state line with Tennessee – where the storm ripped away the grass on a high school football field.
There have been at least five deaths in Indiana: Three people were reported dead near Sullivan, according to state police, while the Department of Natural Resources confirmed two dead at a campground at McCormick’s Creek State Park in Owen County.
Among the other fatalities were four people who died in Illinois, including one person who died after the roof of the Apollo Theater in Belvidere collapsed Friday while more than 200 people were inside, injuring more than two dozen people, according to the city fire chief. Three people were reported dead in Crawford County, Illinois, in a residential structure collapse, according to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.
State and local officials also reported one person dead in each of the following locations: North Little Rock, Arkansas; Madison County, Alabama; and Pontotoc County, Mississippi. Finally, the storm system left another person dead in Delaware’s Sussex County after a structure collapsed, according to the county’s emergency operations center.
The latest surge of extreme weather in the South and Midwest comes just a week after a severe tornado-spawning storm swept through the Southeast that killed at least 26 others and destroyed much of Rolling Fork, Mississippi.
This Sunday, the threat will shift to the Southern Plains, where nearly 13 million people in North Texas, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, face an increased risk – or level 3 of 5 – of severe weather at the end of in the afternoon or early evening, according to the Storm Prediction Center.
“Several tornadoes are likely, a couple of which may be strong,” the center said in an update Sunday, adding that there was a 10 percent or greater chance of tornadoes between EF-2 and EF-5 within 25 miles (40 km) around the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area.
Scattered severe thunderstorms are expected over central and northeast Texas between 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. CT, the Storm Prediction Center said. Hail the size of golf balls or larger could also pose a threat.
Debbie Lowdermilk holds photos as she looks at the destroyed school she owns the day after a tornado hit Sullivan, Indiana. (Credit: Jon Cherry/Reuters)
A small town “basically split in half”
The governors of Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, and Arkansas announced emergency or disaster declarations in their states to help release immediate assistance for affected counties, and on Sunday, President Joe Biden issued a major disaster declaration for Arkansas.
The declaration frees up federal resources, according to the White House, to help those affected in Cross, Lonoke and Pulaski counties, which includes the city of Little Rock, where serious damage but no deaths were reported as of Saturday afternoon.
He National Metereological Service reported that an EF-3 tornado roared through Pulaski and Lonoke counties in Arkansas with estimated top winds of 165 mph (265 km/h).
Efforts are now focused on recovery and rebuilding, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said. About 2,600 structures in Little Rock were affected and about 50 people were sent to hospitals, according to the mayor.
“It’s unbelievable every time you see vehicles literally flying through the air, structures being crushed,” the mayor said. “Many people were not at home. It would have been a massacre,” Scott Jr. told CNN.
An aerial view of homes destroyed in the aftermath of a tornado in Little Rock, Arkansas, on Saturday. (Credit: Cheney Orr/Reuters)
In addition to leaving trails of destruction, the storms also left battered communities without power. More than 30,000 customers in Arkansas were still affected by outages as of Sunday morning, according to PowerOutage.USwith hundreds of thousands more without power in the South and Northeast, including 120,000 in Pennsylvania and 73,000 in Ohio.
The severe weather left Wynne, Arkansas, “basically split in half with damage from east to west,” said Mayor Jennifer Hobbs, who watched the tornado from a distance as it approached.
“I don’t know how to put it into words. It was devastating. It’s very different to see it firsthand than when you see it on TV in other communities,” Hobbs said.
Some houses in Wynne — home to about 8,000 residents — were completely crushed in piles of wood, while others had their roofs torn off, exposing their interiors littered with storm debris, drone footage provided to CNN shows. .
“We have many families that are completely devastated. They are homeless at all, no belongings survived,” the mayor added.
Early storm warning saved lives, sheriff says
Janice Pieterick and her husband, Donald Lepczyk, were in their trailer home in Hohenwald, Tennessee, when they received a warning of an approaching tornado and rushed across the yard to their daughter’s house, she reported. WTVF, CNN affiliate. The tornado struck minutes later.
The family rushed to the bathroom where they huddled together as the storm raged.
“We had her and the kids get in the bathtub because that was supposed to be the safest place. And we all huddled together because all the doors were blown off. Double doors to the front, double doors to the back, all glass in the windows. It all blew up at once,” Pieterick said.
Pieterick further commented that the entire house trembled. “You can literally feel it move. Lifting up. That’s when we thought we were going to go too,” he said.
In nearby McNairy County, Sheriff Buck said the death toll could have been much higher if residents had not heeded early warnings and sought adequate shelter.
“If they hadn’t, looking at the devastation we had, our death toll could have been in the hundreds,” Buck said. “The power of Mother Nature is something that should not be underestimated.”
CNN’s Andi Babineau, Samantha Beech, Raja Razek, Andy Rose and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
