What happened?
A tornado outbreak tore through several states on Friday night. At least five were struck, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.
The tornadoes were part of a weather system that was wreaking havoc in many parts of the country, causing substantial snowfall across parts of the upper Midwest and western Great Lakes.
Dozens of people were killed.
Kentucky’s governor said Saturday morning that at least 50 had been killed in a tornado’s path of over 200 miles, and that the state’s death toll was likely to increase to more than 70 in the coming hours.
The storms caused a wall and roof to collapse at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois, leaving workers trapped inside. The authorities confirmed people had died, but did not say how many as of Saturday morning.
Officials in Tennessee said three people were killed: two in Lake County and one in Obion County, in the western part of the state.
In Arkansas, officials said that at least one person at a nursing home was killed.
The precise number of people killed and injured was not yet known, and search-and-rescue operations were continuing in several places Saturday morning.
What’s the damage like?
Officials across the five-state area were still assessing the extent of the damage on Saturday morning. Local news reports and videos on social media showed crumbled buildings and downed trees across the storm’s path.
As of Saturday morning, more than 132,000 homes were without power in Tennessee, nearly 60,000 in Kentucky, more than 25,000 in Arkansas, nearly 24,000 in Illinois and nearly 10,000 in Missouri, according to reports compiled by PowerOutage.us.
The storms also caused a freight train to derail, although no injuries were reported.
Comentários