CRYSTAL SPRINGS, Ark. — Powerful spring storms roared through parts of the South on Friday, toppling trees, smashing buildings and killing at least nine people, including two sets of parents and children who were huddled together as the winds raged outside their homes.
It was the deadliest storm of the season so far. At least one tornado accompanied the onslaught, but much of the damage was attributed to straight-line winds — sudden, violent downbursts that struck with hurricane force in the middle of the night.
As the storm howled through Crystal Springs, Eden Davis woke up, grabbed her young child and sat on the bed waiting to pull a mattress over both of them to shield the pair from flying debris.
“I’ve never been so nervous about a storm,” she said. “I was asleep, but my fiance called me and told me to wake up and that I needed to watch the news because the weather was getting real bad.”
Seven people died in Arkansas. Two more were killed in southeastern Oklahoma, and dozens of others were hurt.
Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe said he had never seen the state suffer so many deaths from straight-line winds. Tornadoes and floods cause most of Arkansas’ storm fatalities.
“Just trees blowing on people’s residences — I don’t recall anything even approaching this,” Beebe said.
Unlike tornadoes, which develop from columns of rotating air, straight-line winds erupt from a thunderstorm in unpredictable downdrafts and spread across the landscape in all directions.
At Crystal Springs, lightning split a tree that fell into a home, killing an 18-month-old girl and her father as they slept. In Little Rock, winds knocked a tree into a home, killing a woman and her 8-year-old son in his bed.
In the Arkansas town of Bald Knob, 6-year-old Devon Adams died when the top of a tree crashed through his home while he was sleeping.
At least 25 people were hurt as a tornado plowed through the town of Tushka, Okla., before dawn.
