ATKINS, Ark. -- Residents in five southern states awoke yesterday to widespread clusters of destruction caused by an unusually ferocious winter tornado system. At least 54 people were killed and scores were injured.
Many had spent a harrowing Tuesday night punctuated by breaking glass and warning sirens as the tornadoes tossed trailer homes into the air, collapsed the roof of a Sears store in Memphis, whittled away half a Caterpillar plant near Oxford, Miss., and shredded dorms at Union University in Jackson, Tenn., leaving crews to rescue nine students trapped in the rubble.
Arkansas and Tennessee were the hardest hit, with Arkansas reporting 13 dead and Tennessee 28. Here in Atkins, 70 miles northwest of Little Rock, a couple and their 11-year-old daughter died when their house was wiped out by a direct hit, and in northwestern Alabama the bodies of another family of three were found 50 yards from the foundation of their ruined home.
In Macon County, Tenn., a 74-year-old man whose trailer was destroyed died as his family waited for an ambulance to navigate debris-strewn roads. Thirty-five injuries were reported in Gassville, a small community in Baxter County, Ark., that was almost totally leveled by the storm.
"The wrath of God is the only way I can describe it," Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee said after surveying the damage by helicopter. "I'm used to seeing roofs off houses; houses blown over. These houses were down to their foundations, stripped clean."
The governor said 1,000 houses in Tennessee were destroyed. President Bush announced he would head to the state tomorrow to view the damage.
Much of the havoc was caused by rare "long-track" tornadoes, which stay on the ground for distances of 30 to 50 miles. One tornado in Arkansas seems to have burned a path through five counties, said Renee Preslar, the public education coordinator for the Arkansas Division of Emergency Management.
"Normally, tornadoes touch down and they're on the ground for 20 minutes and they pop back up," Preslar said. "There's no signs yet of this having ever come off the ground."
Tornado experts said there was no evidence that the deadly outbreak was related to global warming or anything other than the clash of contrasting cold and warm air masses that usually precedes such events.
Dr. Harold Brooks, a meteorologist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Okla., said there has been a long history of midwinter storms exacting a deadly toll. The most lethal February was in 1971, when tornadoes ripped across Louisiana and Mississippi. Altogether, according to the severe storms center's archives, 134 people died in tornadoes in February that year.
The number of deaths is as much a function of chance and location as the number of tornadoes, he said. Brooks noted that the biggest midwinter outbreak of twisters on record, on Jan. 21-22, 1999, saw 134 tornadoes altogether, but nine deaths.
In Jackson, Matt Taylor, a junior at Union University, was scouring the campus yesterday for his missing Jeep after a close call that left him with staples in his scalp and a bandaged leg.
On Tuesday night, Taylor had hunkered down in Waters Commons, a dorm, when the sirens went off, but when a door blew open he was sucked outside, taking with him a gumball machine he had grabbed hold of. "By the time I got back in, it exploded," he said of the building.
Although 80 percent of the residential section of the campus was demolished or severely damaged, there were no deaths. Across the region, residents said they owed their lives to early warnings.
"I've lived in Champaign, Ill., and in southern Mississippi, and neither place had a decent early-warning system like we do here in Moulton," said Elaina Peyton, who now resides in the seat of Lawrence County, Ala. "We heard the sirens last night at about 2 a.m. and so our daughter knew to come downstairs and we knew that something was happening. The television went out around 3:30 or so and we just followed the news on the radio."
The destruction began in Arkansas in late afternoon on Tuesday. A tornado that residents described as a vast black wall of wind and debris tore a six-mile swath through the center of Atkins, a rural, agricultural town with a population of about 3,300, killing four people and injuring at least eight others.