HENRYVILLE, ind. — Powerful storms leveled two small towns in southern Indiana, transforming entire blocks of homes into piles of debris, tossing school buses into a home and a restaurant, and causing destruction so severe, it was difficult to tell what was once there.
As night fell Friday, dazed residents shuffled through town, some looking for relatives, while rescue workers searched for survivors. Without power, the only light in town came from cars that crawled down the streets.
From the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, the storms touched nearly all walks of life. A fire station was flattened. Roofs were ripped off schools. A prison fence was knocked down, and scores of homes and businesses were destroyed. At least 28 people were killed, including 14 in Indiana, and dozens of others were hurt in the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were missing.
The threat of tornadoes was expected to last late into the evening Friday for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said the massive band of storms put 10 million people at high risk of dangerous weather.
In Henryville, the scene was eerie and somewhat chaotic. Cellphones and landlines were not working. Hundreds of firefighters and police zipped around town. Power lines were down, and cars were flipped over. People walked down the street with shopping carts full of water and food, handing it out to whoever was in need.
Terry Brishaber said his uncle’s mobile home was gone. “I don’t see any remnants,” he said. “I don’t know where it’s at.”
Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video shot by WLKY in Louisville, Ky., also showed a mangled school bus protruding from the side of a one-story building and dozens of overturned semis strewn around the smashed remains of a truck stop.
Forecasters said the spate of storms was unusual.
“Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center,” said forecaster Corey Mead. “This is one of those days.”
Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed temporarily because of debris on its three runways, but one runway had reopened by late afternoon. A fire station was flattened, and several barns were toppled in northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from the badly damaged Indiana towns.
Terry Sebastian, a spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, said 12 people were killed in the state Friday. Two people died in Ohio as well.
The outbreak also was causing problems in Alabama and Tennessee, where dozens of houses were damaged. It came two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.
At least 20 homes were ripped off their foundation, and eight people were injured in the Chattanooga, Tenn., in the wake of strong winds and pounding hail.
An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum-security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, Ala., but none of the facility’s approximately 2,100 inmates escaped.
Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. He said part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure.
