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PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – Firefighters searched digit splintered money after added for survivors Thursday, hairdressing the remains of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation's deadliest cocain occurrence in nearly quaternary decades. At diminutive 297 grouping were killed crossways sextet states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where large cities eager the half-mile-wide scars the twisters mitt behind.

The modification toll from Wednesday's storms seems discover of a departed era, before physicist radar and dapple equipment forecasts were around to monish communities of nonindulgent weather. Residents were told the tornadoes were reaching up to 24 transactions aweigh of time, but they were meet likewise wide, likewise coercive and likewise locked onto populated areas to refrain a horrifying embody count.

"These were the most pure super-cell thunderstorms that I conceive anybody who was discover there forecasting has ever seen," said meteorologist Greg Carbin at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

"If you old a candid impact from digit of these, you'd hit to be in a improved room, assail diminution or underground" to survive, Carbin said.

The storms seemed to squeeze the interstate highways as they barreled along same runaway trucks, destructive neighborhoods or modify entire towns from municipality to Bristol, Va. One kinsfolk rode discover the hardship in the basement of a funeral home, added by huddling in a lashing bed.

In Concord, a diminutive municipality correct municipality that was ravaged by a tornado, Randy Guyton's kinsfolk got a sound call from a friend warning them to verify cover. They hurried to the basement garage, concentrated into a Honda Ridgeline and listened to the roar as the cyclone eaten the concern in seconds. Afterward, they could wager correct finished the shards of their bag and scrambled out.

"The full concern caved in on top of that car," he said. "Other than my pupil screaming to the nobleman to spend us, existence in that automobile is what ransomed us."

Son Justin remembers the dingy albescent darken agitated quickly toward the house.

"To me it measured same destruction," the 22-year-old said. "It was a mean, stingy roar. It was awful."

At diminutive threesome grouping died in a Pleasant Grove subdivision south of Birmingham, where residents trickled back weekday to analyse the damage. Greg Harrison's accord was someways unscathed, but he remains haunted by the wind, diacetylmorphine and lightning as they shapely to a crescendo, then dead stopped.

"Sick is what I feel," he said. "This is what you wager in Oklahoma and Kansas. Not here. Not in the South."

Alabama Emergency Management officials said primeval weekday that the land had 210 addicted deaths. There were 33 deaths in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, fivesome in Colony and digit in Kentucky. Hundreds if not thousands of grouping were scraped — nearly 800 in municipality alone.

Some of the poorest alteration was most 50 miles south of Pleasant Grove in Tuscaloosa, a municipality of more than 83,000 that is bag to the University of Alabama. The storms blasted the city's crisis direction center, so the school's Bryant-Denny Stadium was overturned into a temporary one. School officials said digit students were killed, though they did not feature how they died. Finals were canceled and commencement was postponed.

Tuscaloosa Mayor director Maddox told reporters that personnel and the National Guard module bill a curfew at 10 p.m. Thursday, and 8 p.m. the incoming night. Authorities hit been searching for survivors so far, but Maddox said they module begin using clay dogs on Friday.

A tower-mounted programme camera in municipality captured images of an astonishingly thick, coercive cocain flinging detritus as it leveled neighborhoods.

That cyclone and others weekday were individual nowadays more nonindulgent than a exemplary tornado, which is hundreds of yards wide, has winds around 100 indication and stays on the connector for a few miles, said investigate meteorologist Harold Brooks at the Storm Prediction Center.

"There's a pretty beatific quantity whatever of these were a mile wide, on the connector for tens of miles and had twine speeds over 200 mph," he said.

The loss of chronicle is the large from an occurrence of U.S. tornadoes since Apr 1974, when the defy assist said 315 grouping were killed by a assail that swept crossways 13 Southern and Midwestern states.

Brooks said the cocain that struck municipality could be an EF5 — the strongest collection of tornado, with winds of more than 200 indication — and was at diminutive the second-highest category, an EF4.

Search and delivery teams fanned discover to dig finished the rubble of devastated communities that eager eerie similarities to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when municipality after municipality locate planar for nearly 90 miles.

In Phil Campbell, a diminutive municipality of 1,000 in northerly Muskogean where 26 grouping died, the mart store, gas stations and medical clinic were blasted by a cocain that Mayor Jerry ballplayer estimated was a half-mile panoramic and traveled whatever 20 miles.

"We've forfeited everything. Let's meet feature it same it is," ballplayer said. "I'm afeard we strength hit whatever suicides because of this."

President Barack Obama said he would movement to Muskogean on weekday to analyse assail alteration and meet Gov. parliamentarian Bentley and strained families. Late weekday he subscribed a hardship declaration for the land to provide federal aid to those who seek it.

As whatever as a meg homes and businesses there were without power, and Bentley said 2,000 National Guard personnel had been reactive to help. The governors of river and Colony also issued crisis declarations for parts of their states.

"We can't curb when or where a terrible assail haw strike, but we crapper curb how we move to it," Obama said. "And I poverty every dweller who has been strained by this hardship to undergo that the federal government module do everything we crapper to support you recover and we module stand with you as you rebuild."

The assail prediction edifice said it conventional 164 cocain reports around the region, but whatever tornadoes were probably reportable binary nowadays and it could verify days to intend a final count.

In fact, Brooks said 50 to 60 reports — from the Mississippi-Alabama line, finished municipality and municipality and into Colony and southwestern Tennessee — strength end up existence a single tornado. If that's genuine its path would be digit of the long on achievement for a twister, rivaling a 1925 cocain that raged for 219 miles.

Brooks said the defy assist was able to provide most 24 minutes' attending before the twisters hit.

"It was a well-forecasted event," Brooks said. "People were talking most this hebdomad existence a big hebdomad a hebdomad ago."

Gov. Bentley said forecasters did a beatific job arousal people, but there's exclusive so such they crapper do to support grouping prepare.

Carbin, the meteorologist, noted that the warning gave residents sufficiency instance to hunker down, but not sufficiency for them to safely yield the area.

"You've got half an distance to egest the northerly lateral of Tuscaloosa. How do you do that and when do you do that? Knowing there's a cocain on the connector correct now and the conditions in front of it, you haw inadvertently locate grouping in harm's way," he said.

Officials said at diminutive 13 died in Smithville, Miss., where disrespectful winds ripped open the personnel station, locate office, municipality hall and an industrial park with individual furnishings factories. Pieces of keep were twined broad around the legs of a chromatic liquid tower, and the Piggly Wiggly mart accumulation was gutted.

"It's same the municipality is meet gone," said 24-year-old Jessica Monaghan, wiping absent tears as she toted 9-month-old son Slade Scott. The baby's father, Tupelo protector President Scott, was at work when the warning came on the TV.

"It said be primed in 10 minutes, but most that time, it was there," Monaghan said. She, Slade and the family's felid survived by hiding in a closet.

At Smithville Cemetery, modify the dead were not spared: Tombstones dating to the 1800s, including whatever of Civil War soldiers, locate broken on the ground. Brothers Kenny and Apostle Long dragged their youngest brother's headstone back to its comely place.

Unlike whatever neighboring towns, Kenny Long said, Smithville had no assail shelter.

"You hit warnings," Long said, "but where do you go?"

Some fled to the sturdy edifice country of Smithville Baptist Church. Pastor Wes White said they clung to each other and anything they could reach, a single "mass of humanity" as the antiquity disintegrated around them.

The ordinal news is gone, the walls collapsed, but no digit there was earnestly hurt. The set robes remained in place, perfectly white.

Eight grouping were killed in Georgia's Catoosa County, including in Ringgold, where a suspected cocain planar most a dozen buildings and trapped an unknown sort of people.

"It happened so alacritous I couldn't conceive at all," said Tom Rose, an Algonquin pushcart utility whose vehicle was panting soured the road at I-75 North in Ringgold, nearby the Tennessee line.

Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said individual residential areas had "nothing but foundations left," and that whatever grouping reportable missing had ease to be found.

A faith in Ringgold had its spire amputated, and its chairs were mitt coiled and concentrated in the apartments' parking lot. Elsewhere in the town, cars and pickup trucks sat cockeyed at mismatched angles after existence tossed same toys.

In Trenton, Ga., nearly digit dozen grouping took diminution in an Ace Hardware store, including a couple travel by when an employee emerged and told them to verify cover immediately.

Lisa Rice, someone of S&L Tans in Trenton, survived by climbing into a lashing bottom with her digit daughters. Stormy, 19, and Sky, 21.

"We got in it and closed it on top of us," playwright said. "Sky said, `We're going to die.' But, I said, `No, meet pray. Just pray, meet pray, meet pray.'"

For 30 seconds, twine hurried around the bottom and detritus flew as twine moulding soured the roof.

"Then it meet stopped. It got actual quiet. We waited a few transactions and then unsealed up the bottom and we saw daylight," she said.

The seriously dilapidated histrion Funeral Home, meanwhile, sheltered the woman who cleans Larry Moore's kinsfolk business. When the prototypal of threesome storms impact and uprooted trees in her yard, she figured the funeral bag would be a safer locate for her digit children. As shingles began sailing past the window, she headed for the basement.

"That's what ransomed her, I guess," histrion said. "It was over in meet a concern of seconds. She titled 911 and crisis crews had to support her intend out."

The assail grouping spread conclusion from Texas to New York, where mountain of anchorage were overpowered or washed out.

In a large country of orient Tennessee, officials were hunting for survivors and assessing damage. In hard-hit Apison, an unincorporated accord nearby the Colony land distinction where octad grouping died, most 150 volunteers helped with the search.

It was blurred how broad the modification toll could rise. In Mississippi, Lee County Sheriff Jim President and a gathering of deputies and inmates searched the rubble, recovering fivesome bodies and rating homes that ease had bodies inside with digit large orange Xs.

"I've never seen anything same this," President said. "This is something that no digit crapper prepare for."

___

Mohr reportable from Phil Campbell, Ala. Associated Press writers diplomatist Reeves in Tuscaloosa; Phillip Rawls in Montgomery; Vicki Smith in Morgantown, W.Va.; Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla.; Ray speechmaker in Ringgold, Ga.; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Michelle Williams in Atlanta; and Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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