Steve Quayle News Alerts

November 11, 2002

WARTBURG, Tenn. — Huge tornadoes and storms killed at least 33 and injured over 200 in six states Sunday night, and the search was on Monday for some who were missing.

Of the 45 who were unaccounted for Monday morning in the small Tennessee town of Mossy Grove, five were later found and the other 40 are probably alive and unable to phone in, officials said.

"It's mass destruction, death," said Ken Morgan, an officer in Oliver Springs, Tenn. "Mossy Grove is destroyed."

The long band of storms, including several tornadoes, stretched from Louisiana to Pennsylvania, with Tennessee and Alabama the hardest hit Sunday. The death toll included 16 in Tennessee, 10 in Alabama and five in Ohio. Pennsylvania and Mississippi reported one death each. In addition, one man died of a heart attack in Tennessee on Monday while cleaning up around his home.

One tornado in Ohio blasted apart a theater just minutes after a movie ended. Teams inspecting the damage from that tornado believe it had wind topping 200 mph, a meteorologist said Monday.

The stormy weather continued Monday morning, with tornado warnings posted for sections of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Thousands lost power in the Carolinas and possible tornadoes damaged homes in Louisiana and South Carolina.

The hardest-hit area in Tennessee was a five-mile swath in Morgan County, about 40 miles west of Knoxville. The county includes Mossy Grove, where four people died.

Of the 20 or so residences in Mossy Grove, about a dozen were destroyed. In many cases, all that remained was a foundation and rubble a couple of feet high.

Carbon Hill, Ala., was in a similar situation after a nighttime swarm of storms belted the area and sent giant hardwood trees crashing onto homes.

"I reckon about a third of the town is gone," said Terry Murray, part of a crew surveying the extent of the damage in Carbon Hill.

"Everybody's house is just totally gone. My son doesn't even know where his house is," said Sheryl Wakefield in Carbon Hill. "It's gone. It's just gone."

Wind hit an estimated 140 mph in Tennessee and the storms carried torrential rain and golf-ball-sized hail.

Unseasonably high temperatures Sunday in the 80s, followed by a cold front, made conditions ripe for tornadoes, which are not unusual this time of year, said Gene Rench, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Memphis.

The injured included at least 55 people in Tennessee and 50 in Alabama.

The storms cut a 100-mile swath through northwest Ohio farmland, seriously damaging the town of Van Wert. Gov. Bob Taft declared a state of emergency Sunday night in Van Wert and Ottawa counties, but the storms caused problems around the state.

Survey teams inspecting the damage for the National Weather Service believe the tornado that hit Van Wert had winds of 207-260 mph, said John Taylor, a meteorologist in Syracuse, Ind. That preliminary finding would make it a category F4 storm, the second most severe level on the Fujita scale for measuring damage from tornadoes.

Weather service spotters had said they saw four tornadoes hit Van Wert. Taylor said the storm actually was one tornado that included several funnel clouds around a main funnel.

The storm destroyed the Twin Cinema just minutes after films ended, and two wrecked cars came to rest in the theater where "Santa Clause 2" had been showing.

Manager Scott Shaffer had about five minutes to get moviegoers into sheltered areas after a weather radio squawked a warning of the tornado. Emergency officials credited Shaffer with saving patrons' lives.

"I was too scared to panic," Shaffer said Monday. He crouched with others in a hallway when the twister struck. "For a few seconds, it got ear-piercing."

In Alabama, nine people died in Walker County as thunderstorms charged across the northern part of the state, said Walker County Deputy Coroner Bob Green.

Green was at the scene where the bodies of two women were found: "They were laying down off the side (of a road)," he said. "It was bad. Carbon Hill had a bad time."

The tornadoes in Tennessee came in two waves. Late Saturday and early Sunday, twisters skipped across western and middle Tennessee, killing three people. On Sunday night, the second line of storms crossed the state — this time south and east of Nashville.

Two people, including a 10-year-old boy, were killed and 15 people were injured Sunday night when two mobile home parks, three houses and a church were damaged near Manchester, about 60 miles southeast of Nashville, Sheriff Steve Graves said.

Outside Manchester on Interstate 24, William Fischer's tractor-trailer rig, weighted down with tractor parts, was blown off the road.

"It actually picked me up and spun me around," said Fischer, 29, of Lexington, Tenn. His rig landed upside down but he suffered only bruises. Asked how he could be so calm in recounting what happened, he said: "I don't panic easy."

About an hour later, the tornado ripped through Mossy Grove, damaging at least a dozen houses, said Steven Hamby, director of the Morgan County emergency management center. The dead include a 4-month-old child. Four people were killed in neighboring Cumberland County, officials said.

Near the movie theater in Van Wert, Ohio, Larry Longwell helped hustle about 30 customers into a store basement before a tree slammed into the parking lot.

"I didn't make it to the basement. I was trying to shut that dumb door. All I could see was that pine tree coming at me," Longwell said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,69832,00.html