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CREWS and search dogs hunted yesterday for survivors or bodies in the piles of debris left after a tornado rumbled through the depressed United States mining town of Picher, Oklahoma, a day earlier and killed at least seven people.
The same storm system left at least 15 other people dead in Missouri and Georgia.
Officials held out hope that they would not find any more bodies in Picher, once a bustling mining center of 20,000 that dwindled to about 800 people as families fled lead pollution there.
Residents said the tornado created a surreal scene as it moved through Picher late Saturday, injuring 150 people, overturning cars, throwing mattresses and twisted metal high into the canopy of trees.
"I swear I could see cars floating," said Herman Hernandez, 68. "And there was a roar, louder and louder."
The storm system then moved into southwest Missouri, where tornadoes killed at least 14 others. The storms later moved eastward, and yesterday at least one person was killed in Georgia.
In Seneca, Missouri, about 32 kilometers southeast of Picher near the Oklahoma border, crews yesterday combed farm fields looking for bodies and survivors, a state emergency management spokeswoman said.
"We are finding more unfortunately," Susie Stonner said, referring to the bodies.
Jane Lant was sorting through the debris of her bridal shop about 16 kilometers north of Seneca. A body wrapped in blue tarp lay next to the shop. Her husband's feed store and a home across the road were also destroyed. Lant said they were thankful the stores had closed an hour before the twister hit.
"We would have had people in here," she said.
In Picher, some homes were reduced to their foundations, others lost several walls. In one home, the tornado knocked down a bedroom wall, but left clothes hanging neatly in a closet. A Best Western hotel sign was blown kilometers before coming to rest against a post.
The towering piles of mining waste, or chat, had debris from the flattened homes scattered onto them by the storms. Cars were overturned and dogs roamed freely.
Frank Geasland, Ottawa County's emergency manager, said a government-sponsored buyout of homes in the town left some residences vacant, and this may have prevented a greater loss of life.
The tornado was the deadliest in Oklahoma since a May 3, 1999 twister that killed 44 people around Oklahoma City.
The National Weather Service estimated that at least eight tornadoes had been spawned in Oklahoma along six storm tracks.
Yesterday, storms rumbled across Georgia, killing at least one person in Dublin, about 193 kilometers southeast of Atlanta, authorities said. Weather officials had not yet confirmed whether the storms produced any tornadoes.
Georgia power officials said at least 80,000 residents were without electricity.
Agencies
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