Dozens killed after storm kentucky, Missouri, killed

At least 27 people were killed by striker systems that swept through part of the US Middle West and south. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced on Saturday that 18 of the deaths in his state and 10 others were hospitalized in a critical condition.

A devastating Tornado in Kentucky damaged houses, threw vehicles and left many people homeless. Seventeen of deaths were in Laurel County in the southeast of the state, and one was in Pulaski County: Fire Brigade Maj. Roger Leslie Leatherman, a 39-year-old veteran who was fatally injured in the reaction to the deadly weather.

Parts of two dozen state streets were closed and some were able to take days to open again, said Besear. He also said that the number of fatalities could still increase.

“We now need the whole world to be really good neighbors in this region,” said the governor.

Eric Gibson, director of state emergency management, said hundreds of houses were damaged.

Kayla Patterson, her husband and her five children, crowded in a tub in her basement in London, the County seat when the Tornado raged around her.

“You could literally hear things that tear in the distance, smashed glass everywhere and simply roared like a freight train,” she recalled on Saturday. “It was terrible.”

The family finally appeared to the sounds of sirens and panicked neighbors. While the family's own home was spared, others were demolished directly, said Patterson when the sound of power tools buzzed in the background.

The neighborhood was littered with cutting wood, metal sheet, insulation and stray objects-a suitcase, a sofa, some six-packs of paper towels.

The rescuers looked for survivors all night and until the morning, said the Sheriff's office. Emergency shelter was set up at a local high school and donations of food and other necessities came.

The National Weather Service had not yet confirmed that a tornado had occurred, but the meteorologist Philomon Geertson said that this was likely. It tore across the largely rural area and stretched to London Corbin Airport shortly before midnight.

“The devastation is really heartbreaking”

The inhabitant Chris Cromer said that he got the first of two tornado warnings around 11:30 p.m. or so local time, about half an hour before the tornado struck on his phone. He and his wife grabbed their dog, jumped into their car and burst into the crawlspace in the house of a relative nearby because the couple's crawl space is small.

“We could hear and feel the vibration of the tornado,” said Cromer, 46. A piece of his roof was torn down and the windows were broken, but houses around his were destroyed.

“It is one of these things that you see in the news in other areas and you feel bad for people – when it happens, it's just surreal,” he said. “It makes you grateful to really be alive.”

In Missouri, the mayor of St. Louis, Cara Spencer, said five people died, 38 were injured and more than 5,000 houses were affected in their city.

“The devastation is really heartbreaking,” she said at a press conference on Saturday. An outcome lock overnight should continue in the most damaged districts.

The Weather Service radar stated that a likely Tornado between 2:30 p.m. and 2:50 p.m. local time in Clayton, Mon., in the area of ​​St. Louis. The apparent Tornado landed in the Forest Park area, where the St. Louis Zoo and the place of the World Mass and the 1904 Olympic Games were located in the same year.