Experts: Tornadoes, cars don’t mix

About 100 people have died in twisters so far this year.

SENECA, Mo. (AP) — More than a third of the 22 people killed by a tornado that smashed parts of Oklahoma and Missouri over the weekend died in cars, troubling experts who say vehicles are one of the worst places to be during a twister.

“It’s like taking a handful of Matchbox cars and rolling them across the kitchen floor,” said Sgt. Dan Bracker of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, surveying the damage in and around Seneca, near the Oklahoma line, the hardest hit area. “This is devastating.”

Among those killed were three people in Oklahoma who were rushing to reach a relative’s house in their car; a woman whose car was blown off a road near Seneca; and four family members — Rick Rountree, his wife, his 13-year-old son, and his mother-in-law — who were in a van on the way to a friend’s wedding when a twister packing winds of 170 mph struck the Seneca area on Saturday night.

About 100 people have died in U.S. twisters so far this year, the worst toll in a decade, according to the National Weather Service, and the danger has not passed yet. Tornado season typically peaks in the spring and early summer, then again in the late fall.

All together, at least 25 people died in Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama after the severe storms erupted Saturday over the Southern Plains and swept east.

The death toll rose Monday when Tyler Casey, a 21-year-old firefighter in Seneca, died at a hospital. Officials said he got caught in the tornado while trying to warn people to seek shelter.

According to data from the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center, 49 of the 705 deaths — or about 7 percent — attributed to tornadoes from 1997 to 2007 were people who were in vehicles when the storm struck.

“They can cover more ground than you can in your car, so unless you know you are moving away from the tornado the best thing you can do is find a strong structure,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Andy Foster.

Authorities were still piecing together how some of the other victims died over the weekend. But the Missouri Highway Patrol said one person was killed when her vehicle was blown off the same road where the Rountree family died.

In Picher, Okla., 32 miles away, a man and a woman died when their car was blown into a lagoon. The body of another man from the car wound up in a tree nearby. A 13-year-old girl who was riding in the car was injured.

Another woman was critically injured after she took shelter in a broken-down car outside Susan Roberts’ home in Seneca, authorities said.

Meanwhile, a wet, gusty storm that lashed the mid-Atlantic states Monday forced evacuations, flooded roads, fanned the flames of a deadly New Jersey fire and wrecked a research vessel off the Delaware coast, killing a crew member.

Tens of thousands of electricity customers in several states lost power as up to 5 inches of rain fell Sunday and Monday and wind gusts in some places reached hurricane strength.