Several killed in US Christmas Eve storm

In Mississippi alone, 10 people were confirmed dead and 60 others injured by the state emergency management agency yesterday.

Authorities are unsure how the accident occurred, but TEMA said the deaths are weather related.

Emergency crews in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee were searching for several people reported missing.

Mississippi Emergency Management Agency spokesman Greg Flynn said Thursday a 35-person team was out looking for the two unaccounted people in Benton County, where he said at least two people died in the storms.

She said: “We’re OK and that’s all that matters”.

Barineau said the single tornado hit about 6:45 p.m. and damage stretches across an area of 2 square miles, and was near the intersection of Interstate 30 and George Bush Turnpike, which is a major route in the region.

Dozens of children and their families showed up Friday morning to pick up a toy or other items they might need to recover from the storm, Garbacz said.

But Mosier says the storm system is indicating that the strong tornados are seemingly beginning to wind down.

The greatest risk for a few “intense, long-tracked tornadoes” will be through Wednesday night.

Ten people, including a 7-year-old boy, were killed in MS, six in Tennessee and one in Arkansas and Alabama each. The room’s walls had been blown away. “They were brick houses on a slab”. The garage wall had collapsed and the roof fell in. He said MS is in the recovery stage Thursday, as authorities determine how much damage was caused and what federal assistance the state may qualify for. Local officials estimated as many as 1,450 homes were damaged or destroyed in storms that the National Weather Service said produced nine tornadoes.

“They’re opening all our tornado shelters because they say there’s an 80 per cent chance of a tornado today”, Holland said.

“Sheet metal is wrapped around trees; there are overturned airplanes; a building is just destroyed”.

More than a dozen tornadoes were reported in six states but MS, in the south, was hardest hit.

Television images on The Weather Channel showed what appeared to be a twister moving along the ground for several minutes near Clarksdale, Mississippi.

But he said any reports of tornado-like damage in the region will be treated as if it is a tornado. The storm is moving northeast.

In Linden, Tennessee, Chris Shupiery wore a Santa hat as he cut fallen trees with a chain saw not far from a home in which two people died in the storm.

Dramatic photos of the storm bearing down on Holly Springs emerged Wednesday night.

At least seven people have been killed across the southeastern U.S.as fierce spring-like storms hit Wednesday.

“It’s just a very, very devastating tragic time for our community, especially now here at the holidays”, interim sheriff Nick Weems told CNN from Perry County, Tennessee.

Homes in the neighborhood that had been searched by emergency responders were marked with a black “X”. The toddler was taken to a hospital in Russellville, and no condition was immediately available.

Isolated severe thunderstorms were expected to continue early Thursday from Louisiana through Kentucky, up to Washington D.C. and eastern Pennsylvania, the National Weather Service said.

The unseasonably warm, severe weather also was responsible for seven deaths in MS and one in Arkansas.

In Atkins, Arkansas, 18-year-old Michaela Remus was killed when a tree crashed into the bedroom she was sharing with her 18-month-old sister.