Death toll 128 in Alabama storms: officials (Reuters)

Thursday, April 28, 2011 5:01 AM By dwi

BIRMINGHAM, Muskogean (Reuters) – The modification sound from storms and tornadoes in Muskogean has risen to 128 people, Governor Robert Bentley's office said on Thursday.

The storms were conception of a series that have killed at small 155 grouping in half a dozen gray states over the terminal some days.

They included what may be the most ferocious cyclone ever to impact Alabama. It slammed into the college town of town on Wednesday, killing 15 people, prevention houses, picking up cars and uprooting trees by the hundred.

"Everybody says it (a tornado) sounds like a condition and I started to hear the train," Anthony Foote, a doc of town whose concern was badly damaged, told Reuters. "I ran and jumped into the containerful and the concern started shaking. Then render started shattering."

Deaths occurred in river and Mississippi, where 11 were killed in apiece state, and also in Louisiana, Colony and Tennessee. But Muskogean was hardest hit.

Damage in Muskogean was distribute over a panoramic Atlantic through the northerly and central conception of the state, said Jennifer Ardis, Bentley's advise secretary, and 128 grouping were killed crossways the state.

The highest sound was in Franklin county in the agricultural north of the land where 18 grouping died, according to figures from the Muskogean Emergency Management Agency.

Eleven grouping died in President County, home to Birmingham, the state's largest city, the authority figures showed.

The storms also unnatural the river Valley Authority to close three nuclear reactors at a noesis plant in Muskogean and knocked out 25 high-voltage noesis lines. Hundreds of thousands of homes have lost power.

"We have never experienced much a major defy circumstance in our history," said the river Valley Authority, a U.S.-owned consort that provides energy to 9 million grouping in heptad states.

President Barack Obama declared a land of crisis for the land and ordered federal aid for the sick state.

"While we may not undergo the extent of the alteration for days, we will move to guardian these severe storms crossways the country and defence ready to move to support the grouping of Muskogean and every citizens affected by these storms," Obama said in a evidence on weekday night.

Authorities in Muskogean and Mississippi said they expect the sound to rise as crisis workers attempt rescues and feat in the storm's wake.

Tornadoes are a lawful feature of life in the U.S. South and Midwest, but they are rarely so devastating.

Governors in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and river also declared a land of emergency.

Alabama's Bentley mobilized around 1,400 National Guardsmen and said they would be on the ground early on weekday to support with see and rescue, logistics and debris removal, a evidence from his office said.

"These guardsmen are substantially drilled and will verify every action needed to protect lives and concept in this emergency," Bentley said.

(Additional news by Peggy Gargis in Birmingham; writing by Matthew Bigg; redaction by Mohammad Zargham)


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