OMAHA, Neb. (CN) — Residents of the tornado-ravaged Plains states continued digging out Monday after a series of storms hammered the region over the weekend.
Tornados killed at least five people: four in Oklahoma, including one infant, following a spate of tornadoes on Saturday, and one person in Minden, Iowa, after several cyclones churned through eastern Nebraska and western Iowa on Friday.
“How do you rebuild it? This is complete devastation,” said Kelly Trussell, a lifelong resident of devastated Sulphur, Oklahoma, as she surveyed the damage there, according to the Associated Press. “It is crazy, you want to help but where do you start?”
Carolyn Goodman traveled to Sulphur, a city of about 5,000 roughly 80 miles southeast of Oklahoma City to search for her former sister-in-law, who Goodman said was at a local bar just before the tornado struck.
“The bar was destroyed,” Goodman said. “I know they probably won’t find her alive … but I hope she is still alive.”
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said one of the victims was found inside a bar but authorities had not yet identified the dead. A tornado crumpled many downtown buildings in Sulphur, tossed cars and buses and sheared the roofs off houses across a 15-block radius.
“You just can’t believe the destruction,” said Sitt, a Republican, said during a visit to the hard-hit city, AP reported. “It seems like every business downtown has been destroyed.”
One person was killed in Sulphur, two in Holdenville, Oklahoma, and another was killed on Interstate 35 near Marietta, Oklahoma, authorities said.
Further north, the governors of Nebraska and Iowa visited ravaged communities that had been struck by storms Friday afternoon and evening. In Nebraska, the west-Omaha neighborhood of Elkhorn and the suburb of Bennington were hit by at least one tornado.
“I have ordered that state resources be made available to assist with the emergency response and to support local first responders as they assess the damage,” Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in a press release Saturday. “Nebraskans are tough, resilient people, and our neighbors and communities will rally around affected families and businesses to assist them.”
In Iowa, Governor Kim Reynolds visited Minden, a city of about 600 roughly 25 miles northeast of Omaha, where 48 homes were destroyed, according to Pottawattamie County Emergency Management. Other tornado-struck Iowa communities included Creston in southern Iowa and Pleasant Hill, a suburb on the east side of Des Moines.
Dirk Petersen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office outside Omaha, said instability in the atmosphere Friday made conditions ripe for tornadic weather.
The Weather Service tracked three separate tornado-producing storms in the Omaha area on Friday. One started in the Lincoln area and moved into west Omaha, causing all the damage in Elkhorn and Bennington; another began in northeast Omaha, producing a tornado at the city’s airport before entering Iowa; and a third started west of Glenwood, Iowa, southeast of Omaha, and pushed north, producing the Minden tornado.
Other twisters were reported in rural areas of northeast and southeast Nebraska.
The Weather Service on Monday was still coming to terms with the large scale of the storms.
“We will not know the exact number of tornadoes until we can get even the smaller tornados surveyed, which may take throughout the entire week,” Petersen told Courthouse News.
It was too early to tell how Friday’s storms compared to earlier historic tornados that struck Omaha in 1913 and 1975, but both killed many more people. Minden was hit by a tornado of similar scope in 1976, and Elkhorn in 2014.
Friday, Petersen said, “went about as well as it could have given the extent of damage.”
“It’s hard to compare them, he said, "but this is definitely a very high-profile event that does not happen very often."
The Weather Service assembled a webpage with data collected so far about Friday's storms.
On Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service in Oklahoma City reported that 25 confirmed tornados struck Oklahoma on Saturday.
America’s middle section was still in the line of fire early this week. Iowa and Nebraska were expected to see storms again Tuesday afternoon, but the prognosis was not as severe.
“Will it be like Friday? Probably not,” Petersen said. “We can’t rule out a tornado or two but it does not look like the same kind of event.”
Experts in Oklahoma predicted storms on Tuesday as well.
Said Petersen: “We’re in a pretty active pattern right now so, it is good for anyone who is concerned about the weather to keep an eye on the forecast.”
Follow @nelson_aj
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
Texas challenges Title IX protections for LGBT students April 29, 2024