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Tornado cleanup starts in St. Louis
AP
Photo
Rick Gamma, whose family owns Gamma Tree Service, surveys his progress in cutting up a tree that blew down on Royal Avenue during Friday night's tornado, on Saturday, April 23, 2011, in Ferguson, Mo.
Associated Press
ST. LOUIS
Debris from splintered homes covered the ground in neighborhoods around St. Louis, and toppled trees and overturned cars littered lawns and driveways. From the air, one home looked like a dollhouse that had had its roof lifted off. Looking down, the dining-room table and other contents could be seen, damp in lingering rain.
Amid such damage, officials appeared awed that a tornado that roared through the area Friday night, striking the airport and several nearby suburbs, hadn’t seriously injured anyone.
“It almost feels like a little bit of divine intervention when you look at the devastation,” said Gov. Jay Nixon, who flew over the area to survey the damage.
Nixon said President Barack Obama pledged federal assistance Saturday during a phone conversation. Some 750 homes in the St. Louis region were damaged, and fewer than 100 were uninhabitable, the governor said.
Cleanup swung into full gear Saturday. With the din of chain saws and pounding hammers in the background, homeowners sifted through wreckage while crews scrambled to restore power to the 26,000 customers still without it.
At Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, workers boarded up windows and swept up glass in the main terminal, where the twister had torn off part of the roof and blown out half of the large, plate-glass windows.
The airport reopened Saturday night for a handful of arriving flights, and officials expected around 70 percent of the scheduled arrivals and departures to go on as planned early today. The damaged concourse was likely to remain closed for up to two months.