HENRYVILLE, Indiana ,March4 2012(AP): A string of violent storms scratched away at small towns in Indiana and cut off rural communities in Kentucky as an early-season tornado outbreak killed nearly 30 people, and US authorities feared the already ugly death toll would rise as daylight broke on Saturday’s search for survivors.Massive thunderstorms, predicted by forecasters for days, threw off dozens of tornadoes as they raced Friday from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes. Twisters that crushed entire blocks of homes knocked out cellphones and landlines alike, ripped power lines from broken poles and tossed cars, school buses and tractor-trailers onto roadways made impassable by debris.Weather that put millions of people at risk Friday killed 29, but both the scale of the devastation and the breadth of the storms made an immediate assessment of the havoc’s full extent all but impossible.In Kentucky, the National Guard and state police headed out to search wreckage for an unknown number of missing. In Indiana, authorities searched dark county roads connecting rural communities that officials said ‘are completely gone.’‘We won’t know what’s going on before daybreak,’ cautioned Sheriff’s Maj. Chuck Adams of the Clark County, Ind., where one person was known to have died in hard-hit Henryville. ‘Right now, we’re getting by through the night as best we can.’For those still in the town of about 2,000 north of Louisville, Ky., the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Col. Harland Sanders, that meant walking down littered streets with shopping carts full of water and food, handing it out to anyone in need. Hundreds of firefighters and police zipped around a town where few recognizable structures remained; all of Henryville’s schools were destroyed.‘It’s all gone,’ resident Andy Bell said as he guarded a friend’s demolished service garage, not far from where a school bus stuck out from the side of a restaurant and a parking lot where a small classroom chair jutted from a car window.‘It was beautiful,’ he said, looking around. ‘And now it’s just gone. I mean, gone.’Susie Renner, 54, said she saw two tornadoes barreling down on Henryville within minutes of each other. The first was brown from being filled with debris; the second was black.‘I’m a storm chaser,’ Renner said, ‘and I have never been this frightened before.’Friday’s outbreak came two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South, and forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center had said the day would be one of a handful this year that warranted its highest risk level. By 10 p.m., the weather service had issued 269 tornado warnings. Only 189 warnings were issued in all of February.‘We knew this was coming. We were watching the weather like everyone else,’ said Clark County, Ind., Sheriff Danny Rodden. ‘This was the worst case scenario. There’s no way you can prepare for something like this.’
A total of 14 people were reported killed in Indiana, including four in Chelsea, where a man, woman and their 4-year-old great-grandchild died in one house.Two people also died further north in Holton. Officials also confirmed three deaths in nearby Scott County and another four in Washington County further west.The death toll stood at 12 in Kentucky, and tornadoes were reported in at least six Ohio cities and towns, including the village of Moscow, where a council member found dead in her home was one of at least three people killed in the state.
A total of 14 people were reported killed in Indiana, including four in Chelsea, where a man, woman and their 4-year-old great-grandchild died in one house.Two people also died further north in Holton. Officials also confirmed three deaths in nearby Scott County and another four in Washington County further west.The death toll stood at 12 in Kentucky, and tornadoes were reported in at least six Ohio cities and towns, including the village of Moscow, where a council member found dead in her home was one of at least three people killed in the state.