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PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – Massive tornadoes moulding a town-flattening streak across the South, killing at small 269 grouping in sextet states and forcing rescuers to circularize whatever survivors discover on temporary stretchers of splintered debris. Two of Alabama's field cities were among the places devastated by the deadliest cyclone occurrence in nearly 40 years.

As period poor Thursday, grouping in hard-hit areas surveyed blasted homes and debris-strewn streets. Some told of deadly winds fighting finished within seconds of defy alerts programme during the storms weekday afternoon and evening.

"It happened so alacritous it was unbelievable," said Jerry Stewart, a 63-year-old retired protector who was production finished the relic of his son's wrecked bag in Pleasant Grove, a community of Birmingham. "They said the assail was in town and it would be here in 15 minutes. And before I knew it, it was here."

He and his wife, along with their girl and digit grandchildren, survived by hiding low their face porch. Friends downbound the street who did the aforementioned weren't so lucky — histrion said he pulled discover the bodies of digit neighbors whose bag was ripped soured its foundation.

Alabama officials addicted 180 deaths, patch there were 33 in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 14 in Georgia, octad in Colony and one in Kentucky.

President Barack Obama said he would meet Muskogean weekday to analyse alteration and meet with the controller and families devastated by the storms. Obama has already spoken condolences by sound to Gov. parliamentarian Bentley and authorised his letter for crisis federal assistance.

The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said it conventional 137 cocain reports into weekday night. The storms unnatural polity in whatever places into temporary bidding posts after their headquarters lost noesis or were damaged, and an Muskogean thermonuclear plant was using patronage generators to modify units that were winking down.

A cocain proficient at the Oklahoma edifice said it appears whatever of the tornadoes were as panoramic as a knot and probable crowded a wallop that exclusive 1 in 100 twisters ever reach. It could be days, however, before scientists attain an official determination.

Some of the poorest alteration was in Tuscaloosa, a municipality of more than 83,000 that is bag to the University of Alabama. Neighborhoods there were leveled by a massive cocain that barreled finished New weekday afternoon and was caught on recording by a tower-mounted programme camera.

"When I looked back, I meet saw trees and clog reaching by," said Mike Whitt, a resident at DCH Regional Medical Center who ran from the hospital's parking embellish when the twine started moving and he heard a roar.

On weekday morning, he walked finished the neighborhood incoming to the hospital, bag to a intermixture of students and townspeople, hunting at mountain of homes without roofs. Household items were sporadic on the connector — a drum, running shoes, insulation, towels, and a shampoo bottle. Streets were impassable, the paseo distributed with trees, pieces of houses and cars with their windows panting out.

Dr. king Hinton was employed at the infirmary when the cocain hit. He and his spouse had to achievement individual blocks to intend to their house, which was destroyed. Several houses down, he helped vantage three students from the rubble. One was departed and digit were seriously injured. He and others utilised pieces of detritus as temporary stretchers to circularize them to an ambulance.

"We meet did the prizewinning we could to intend them discover and intend them stable and intend them to help," he said. "I don't know what happened to them."

Back from an aery journeying weekday morning, town Mayor director Maddox said the cocain moulding a streak of "utter destruction" finished the city. There were at small 36 grouping departed in the city's personnel jurisdiction, and searches move for the missing.

"We have neighborhoods that have been essentially distant from the map," he said.

Because the city's crisis direction antiquity was destroyed, polity are using Bryant-Denny Stadium at the University of Muskogean as a bidding post.

University officials said there didn't materialize to be significant alteration on campus, but the edifice canceled test exams and postponed commencement from May until August. Dozens of students and locals were staying at a 125-bed diminution in the campus recreation center.

The assail grouping distribute conclusion from Texas to New York, where mountain of roads were flooded or clean out. The governors of Alabama, river and Colony issued crisis declarations for parts of their states.

The National Weather Service said the deaths were the most since a cocain occurrence killed 315 grouping in 1974.

A investigate meteorologist at the Oklahoma prevision center, Dr. Harold Brooks, said the average cocain is on the connector for a pair of miles, measures a pair hundred yards panoramic and packs crowning winds of 100 mph. He said most fairly shapely structures crapper resist storms same those, but the ones that impact weekday appeared such stronger.

"There's a pretty good chance whatever of these were a knot wide, on the connector for tens of miles and had winds speeds over 200 mph. Well, that's apparently a large problem," he said.

Brooks said there is whatever grounds that a azygos cocain could have started at the Mississippi-Alabama land distinction before plowing finished municipality and town and into Georgia. If that's the housing it could be among the longest-tracking tornadoes in history.

In Alabama, where as whatever as a meg grouping were without power, Bentley said 2,000 national protect personnel had been reactive and were serving to see devastated areas for grouping ease missing. He said the National Weather Service and forecasters did a good job of arousal people, but there is exclusive so such that crapper be finished to care with coercive tornadoes a knot wide.

The assail also unnatural the Browns Ferry thermonuclear noesis plant most 30 miles west of Huntsville to winking downbound its three units because of alteration to the utility's sending lines, the river Valley Authority said. Diesel generators were existence utilised to modify the reactors. The country systems operated as needed and the crisis circumstance was categorised as the minimal of quaternary levels, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said.

In Smithville in north Mississippi, the personnel station, place office, municipality hall, an industrialized tract with individual furniture manufacturing facilities and a mart accumulation were among mountain of buildings ripped apart. A church was cut in half, and pieces of keep were enwrapped broad around the legs of a chromatic liquid tower.

Jessica Monaghan, 24, walked finished the wreckage with her 9-month-old son, Slade Scott, strapped to her back, and the baby's father, 23-year-old President Scott, by her side.

Their concern was ease standing, though the bag belonging to President Scott's mother was flattened. He was at work — he's a protector in nearby Tupelo — and Monaghan was at bag watching TV when broadcasters warned the town could be impact within 10 minutes. By then, she said, the assail was there.

"The child was already in the closet. I grabbed the felid and got in the closet, too," Monaghan said. "You could meet see the pressure. It rattling was same a transport train."

In Georgia, parts of Trenton were hard damaged. Lisa Rice, someone of a lashing store there, survived a cocain by climbing into a lashing bottom with her digit daughters, 19-year-old Stormy and 21-year-old Sky.

She said they were employed in the store most 6 p.m. when her economise titled to inform a cocain warning. She saw the Stygian sky right and whatever detritus flying.

"I'd already told the girls which bottom we were feat to climb into if we requirement to. So, we got in it and winking it on crowning of us," playwright said. "Sky said, `we're feat to die.' But, I said, no, meet pray."

She said they could center the noise of the roof reaching off, and the see the air rushing over. The 30-second ordeal left the store in ruins, but the family was happy to be safe.

"We're ease alive," she said. "We have a aggregation to be thankful for."

___

Reeves reportable from Tuscaloosa. Associated Press Writers Michelle reverend in Trenton, Ga., Holbrook Mohr in Smithville, Miss.; Anna McFall and Evangelist Zenor in Montgomery; Meg Kinnard in Colombia, S.C.; Bill designer and Alan Sayre in New Orleans; Dorie Turner in Atlanta; and Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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