The powerful storm that spawned at least one tornado ripped across the US states of Mississippi and Alabama, tearing off roofs, smashing cars and levelling entire neighbourhoods.
The tornado stayed on the ground for about an hour and cut a path of destruction some 274km (170 miles) long across Mississippi late on Friday, according to Nicholas Price, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi. Homes in Rolling Fork were reduced to rubble, tree trunks snapped like twigs and cars were tossed aside like toys. The town’s water tower lay twisted on the ground.
“My city is gone, but we are resilient,” its mayor, Eldridge Walker, told CNN earlier in the day. “We are going to come back strong.”
“As soon as we would go from one vehicle to the next vehicle or from building to building, we could hear screams and we could hear cries for help,” he told the Reuters news agency.
“And we were just basically in small groups, digging through the rubble, trying to find and extricate people.” In nearby Silver City, a rural community of about 300, residents described locking themselves in interior rooms and cowering inside bathtubs as the tornado swept through.
US President Joe Biden described the images from Mississippi as “heartbreaking” and said in a statement that he had spoken with Reeves and offered his condolences and full federal support for the recovery.
