Storms kill at least 20

Associated Press

HENRYVILLE, Ind.

Powerful storms leveled two small towns in southern Indiana, transforming entire blocks of homes into piles of debris, tossing school buses into a home and a restaurant and causing destruction so severe it was difficult to tell what was once there. As night fell, dazed residents shuffled through town, some looking for relatives, while rescue workers searched the rubble for survivors. Without power, the only light in town came from cars that crawled down the streets.

From the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, the storms touched nearly all walks of life. A fire station was flattened. Roofs were ripped off schools. A prison fence was knocked down, and scores of homes and businesses were destroyed. At least 20 people were killed, including 14 in Indiana, and dozens of others were hurt in the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were missing.

The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said the massive band of storms put 10 million people at high risk of dangerous weather.

In Henryville, the scene was eerie and somewhat chaotic. Cellphones and landlines were not working. Hundreds of firefighters and police zipped around town. Power lines were down, and cars were flipped over. People walked down the street with shopping carts full of water and food, handing it out to whoever was in need.

Terry Sebastian, a spokesman for Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, said five people were killed in two counties Friday.

One person also died in Ohio.

The outbreak also was causing problems in Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were damaged.

It comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.