April 13, 2020, 10:55 pm
Washington/Jackson (dpa) Heavy rain and thunderstorms sweep across the south and southeast of the United States. Several states are affected. The storm ends fatally for some people.
A massive tornado has killed at least six people in Mississippi.
Several tornadoes have caused serious damage and cost lives in the southern United States. The southern state of Mississippi was hardest hit: at least eleven people died there due to the storm, as the local disaster management announced.
There were also injuries, it said. Many houses were damaged or destroyed, streets were closed due to debris lying around. At least 72,000 people are without electricity. The civil protection authority stressed that these are provisional figures.
TV broadcaster ABC reported that there were at least eight deaths in South Carolina and six in Georgia. In addition, one person died in Arkansas. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said there were no deaths in his state.
The storm had hit the southern United States on Easter Sunday. The national weather authority NOAA had warned of possible wind speeds of up to 330 kilometers per hour. It is an “exceptionally rare event”.
Mississippi’s governor Tate Reeves wrote on Twitter: “Nobody wants to celebrate Easter Sunday like this.” The Easter storms are catastrophic, but his state cannot be stopped.
Several US states declared a state of emergency in the face of the storm. In view of the corona pandemic, the authorities in Mississippi appealed to the population to wear breathing masks in all shelters and to observe the distance rules there as well. The United States is the world’s worst-hit corona pandemic, with more than half a million confirmed infections and more than 22,000 deaths.
–
