My prayers are with all in the area of the tornado path. This is what on our local internet news for Mississippi Gulf Coast.
Missouri officials say tornado killed at least 89
Read more:
http://www.sunherald.com/2011/05/22/...#ixzz1NAzxx48o
By KURT VOIGT and ALAN SCHER ZAGIER - Associated Press
JOPLIN, Mo. -- A massive tornado that tore through the southwest Missouri city of Joplin killed at least 89 people, but authorities warned that the death toll could climb Monday as search and rescuers continued their work at sunrise.
City manager Mark Rohr announced the number of known dead at a pre-dawn news conference outside the wreckage of a hospital that took a direct hit from Sunday's storm. Rohr said the twister cut a path nearly six miles long and more than a half-mile wide through the center of town, adding that tornado sirens gave residents about a 20-minute warning before the tornado touched down on the city's west side.
Much of the city's south side was leveled, with churches, schools, businesses and homes reduced to ruins.
Fire chief Mitch Randles estimated that 25 to 30 percent of the city was damaged, and said his own home was among the buildings destroyed as the twister swept through this city of about 50,000 people some 160 miles south of Kansas City.
"It cut the city in half," Randles said.
An unknown number of people were injured in the storm, and officials said patients were scattered to any nearby hospitals that could take them.
Authorities planned to conduct a door-to-door search of the damaged area Monday morning, but were expected to move gingerly around downed power lines, jagged debris and a series of gas leaks that caused fires around the city overnight.
The same storm system that produced the Joplin tornado spawned twisters along a broad swath of the Midwest, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin. At least one person was killed in Minneapolis. But the devastation in Missouri was the worst of the day, eerily reminiscent the tornadoes that killed more than 300 people across the South last month.
Sunday's storm in Joplin hit a hospital packed with patients and a commercial area including a Home Depot construction store, numerous smaller businesses and restaurants and a grocery store. Jasper County emergency management director Keith Stammer said an estimated 2,000 buildings were damaged.