LAFAYETTE, Tenn. — One man pulled a couch over his head. Bank employees rushed into the vault. A woman trembled in her bathroom, clinging to her dogs. College students huddled in dormitories.
Tornado warnings had been broadcast for hours, and when the sirens finally announced that the twisters had arrived, many people across the South took shelter and saved their lives. But others simply had nowhere safe to go, or the storms proved too powerful, too numerous, too unpredictable.
At least 55 people were killed and hundreds injured Tuesday and Wednesday by dozens of tornadoes that plowed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. It was the nation’s deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years.
“We had a beautiful neighborhood. Now, it’s hell,” said Bonnie Brawner, 80, who lives in Hartsville, a community about an hour from Nashville where a natural-gas plant that was struck by a twister erupted in spectacular flames up to 400 feet high.
The storms flattened entire streets, smashed warehouses and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber.
Cattle wandered through the debris near hard-hit Lafayette. At least 12 people died in and around the town.
“It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground,” said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter.
President Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency center in Georgia.
With five minutes’ warning from TV news reports, Nova and Ray Story huddled inside their home outside Lafayette and came out unscathed. But nearby, their uncle, Bill Clark, was injured in his toppled mobile home.
They put him in the bed of their pickup to take him to a hospital, and neighbors with chain saws tried to clear a path. What normally would have been a 30-minute drive to the hospital took well more than two hours because the roads were clogged with debris. Clark died on the way.
“He never had a chance,” Nova Story said. “I looked him right in the eye, and he died right there in front of me.”
Most communities had ample warning that the storms were coming. Forecasters had warned for days that severe weather was possible.
The National Weather Service issued more than 1,000 tornado warnings from 3 p.m. Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday in the 11-state area where the weather was heading.
The conditions for bad weather had lined up so perfectly that the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., put out an alert six days in advance.
In Atkins, Ark., Sheriff Jay Winters said the first tornado siren sounded at 4:34 p.m. Tuesday.
Winters said one man, on hearing the siren, went into his home and rolled a couch onto himself for protection. Lola Sanders saw the twister approach her back porch, then grabbed her dogs and ran for the bathroom.
Kitty Chandler had just left work at the Liberty Bank of Arkansas but turned around and returned after hearing the tornado sirens.
“I went to the bank, into our vault. One of the safest places to be,” she said.
Some residents found reason to be thankful. In Castalian Springs, Tenn., a baby was discovered unscathed in a field across from a demolished post office. A bystander swaddled the crying child in his shirt. There was no word on the fate of the child’s parents.
