Tornado kills 23 in US

Rescuers searched for victims yesterday amid homes smashed to their foundations, shredded metal dangling from trees and dead animals lying in the open after at least one tornado ripped through a rural Alabama community.

At least 23 people were killed, some of them children. It was the deadliest day of tornadoes in the U.S. in nearly six years. Traveling at least part of the way down a country road, a twister carved a trail of destruction at least half a mile wide and about a mile long Sunday, overwhelming the Lee County coroner’s office, which was forced to call in help from the state, authorities said.

“It looks like someone almost just took a giant knife and scraped the ground,” Sheriff Jay Jones said. With daybreak, volunteers used chain saws to clear paths for emergency workers, while at the R&D Grocery, people asked each other if they were OK.

“I’m still thanking God I’m among the living,” said John Jones, who has lived most of his life in Beauregard, an unincorporated community of roughly 10,000 people about 60 miles east of Montgomery near the Georgia state line.

The twister, rated an EF-3, with winds believed to be around 136 mph (219 kph) or higher, was part of a powerful storm system that slashed its way across the Deep South, spawning numerous tornado warnings in Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.

Patrick Marsh, warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, said the deaths could have come from more than one tornado. There was another likely twister reported in the county, he said.