KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Shaken residents spent New Year’s Day sifting through the wreckage wrought by tornadoes that touched down in several states on the last day of 2010, killing seven people in two states and injuring dozens of others.
Six of the victims — three in Missouri and three in Arkansas — died Friday as tornadoes fueled by unusually warm air pummeled the South and Midwest. A seventh victim who was injured Friday near the Missouri town of Rolla died Saturday at a hospital in Columbia, said Bruce Southard, chief of the Rolla Rural Fire Department.
The woman, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was entertaining a friend, Alice Cox, 69, of Belle, Mo., in her trailer when the twister hit.
Southard said nothing was left of the trailer except for the frame. The twister scattered debris 40 to 50 yards from where the trailer had sat. The woman was found under a pile of debris, Southard said.
“It’s like you set a bomb off in it,” Southard said in a phone interview. “It just annihilated it.”
Severe storms, including possible tornadoes, also ripped through central Mississippi on New Year’s Eve, and emergency teams were working Saturday to survey the damage.
The National Weather Service in Jackson reported at least three people hurt and extensive structural damage. No one was killed. The storms knocked down trees and power lines.
