Unrelenting tornadoes that ripped through parts of the southern and midwestern United States killed at least 11 people, brought down the roof of a packed theater during a heavy metal concert in Illinois and left residents of small towns and large cities across the region shocked this Saturday by the damage suffered.
The exact number of deaths is unknown and could rise in the coming hours as emergency services in the hardest-hit states (Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Tennessee) search the streets for survivors and assess the damage.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency Friday after authorities reported the deaths of a North Little Rock resident and four other people in Wynne in separate tornadoes.
Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, is one of the hardest hit cities, and according to Mayor Frank Scott Jr., at least 30 people have been hospitalized and 2,000 homes have been damaged. “We know that Little Rock’s neighbors are resilient and we will get through this together,” Scott Jr. said Saturday in a video on Twitter, in which the wind could still be heard blowing strongly.
A state of emergency has also been declared in Missouri, which means the state is putting all its available resources to work on the search.
In northern Illinois, the tornadoes left a scene of “absolute chaos,” in the words of Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Specifically, the tornadoes caused the roof of a theater where 260 people were attending a heavy metal concert to partially collapse, leaving at least one person dead and 28 injured, five of whom are in serious condition. according to the Belvidere Fire Department.
In addition, three people died in Sullivan County (Indiana) and six were hospitalized in Covington (Tennessee), collects The New York Times.
The tornadoes have also left some 400,000 homes without power in 10 states, data from the PowerOutage.us website, which monitors this service, shows.
In addition to tornadoes in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Tennessee, the National Weather Service (NWS) has reported tornadoes in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Mississippi.
According to the National Weather Service, the storm will move to the east during Saturday, so alerts have been activated due to the force of the winds in Alabama and Georgia.
Tornadoes have hit the Midwest and South of the country just hours after US President Joe Biden visited the town of Rolling Fork (Mississippi) yesterday, Friday, which was devastated last week when a series of strong Tornadoes struck the region, leaving 26 dead.
