As Friday's vicious storm dies down, the scale of the damage has been difficult to comprehend for those cleaning up. NBC's Tom Costello reports.
By msnbc.com staff, weather.com and news services
Calm weather gave dazed residents of storm-wracked U.S. towns?some respite on Sunday as they dug out from a chain of tornadoes that cut a swath of destruction from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, killing at least 39 people.
The fast-moving twisters spawned by massive thunderstorms splintered blocks of homes, damaged schools and a prison, and tossed around vehicles like toys, killing 21 people in Kentucky, 13 in neighboring Indiana, three in Ohio and one in Alabama, officials said. Georgia also reported a storm-related death.
Forecasters said more trouble was headed for the hardest hit areas of Indiana and Kentucky, where a winter weather advisory was in effect. Snow was expected to add to the misery for hundreds of residents whose homes were destroyed.
"The air will be just cold enough that a weak disturbance moving across the Ohio Valley will bring some light snow Sunday night into Monday across portions of southern Indiana, Kentucky and southern Ohio as the clean-up continues," weather.com meteorologist Chris Dolce said. "Accumulations in these tornado-ravaged areas will be light, generally a dusting to an inch or two."
Eric Thayer / Reuters
Severe storms and tear through the midwest and southern states.
The fast-moving tornadoes that hit on Friday, numbering at least 30, came on top of severe weather earlier in the week in the Midwest and brought the overall death toll from the unseasonably early and violent storms to at least 52 people.
Adding to the despair, a toddler who had become a symbol of hope amid destruction after she was found alive in an Indiana field died of her injuries, state police said. The tornado that killed Angel Babcock also claimed the lives of her parents and her two siblings.
'Reunited with her parents'
Angel, who was reported to be 14 months old, had been in critical condition in a Kentucky hospital since Friday, when she was found after a tornado hit her family's mobile home in New Pekin, Indiana.
"Angel has been reunited with her parents," the girl's extended family said in a statement released through the hospital. "We want to thank God for all of you and for your thoughts and prayers. God will bring you and all of us out of this."
Angel's family of five were the only people killed in Washington County, one of the hardest hit areas of the state.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told CBS' "Face the Nation" that the twister "moved like a lawnmower though some of the most beautiful countryside, and some of the most beautiful towns that we have."
Weather.com: Tornado outbreak -- As it happened
In Henryville, Ind., about 20 miles area north of Louisville, school was canceled for the week because of heavy damage to the education complex housing elementary through high school students.
Even so, small signs of normalcy slowly began to emerge.
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Utility crews replaced downed poles and restrung electrical lines. Portable cell towers went up, and a truck equipped with batteries, cellphone charging stations, computers and even satellite television was headed to Henryville on Monday.
"We're going to keep living," said the Rev. Steve Schaftlein during a Sunday service at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, where about 100 people gathered under a patched-up six-foot hole in the church's roof to worship and catch up on news of the tornado.
The violent storms raised fears that 2012 would be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths in the United States were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
Stolen copper
In hard-hit areas, National Guard troops manned checkpoints on roads and outside towns, and were inspecting identity documents of those seeking to enter damaged areas in Indiana and Kentucky following reports of looting. Long lines of cars waited at the entrances to some towns.
As recently as Sunday afternoon, police stopped a vehicle on a back road that was trying to leave a home with a load full of stolen copper, said Albert Hale, emergency manager for Kentucky's Laurel County.
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Authorities have also caught people stealing scrap metal and trailers full of animals, and security personnel in Kentucky's Menifee County spent Saturday collecting weapons from destroyed homes to secure them from possible looters, a sheriff's official said.
"I've been through enough disasters to know that people see these situations as an opportunity to come take what they want," said Richard Franklin, chief deputy of the Menifee County sheriff's office. He said looters came from as far away as Ohio.
Kentucky's Governor Steve Beshear urged spectators and unsolicited volunteers to stay out of the way so emergency responders could do their jobs.
Beshear described the scene in the hard-hit town of West Liberty as one of "total devastation" and signed an executive order barring price gouging for food and other necessities.
Businesses in West Liberty were so damaged by Friday's storm that they will have to come down. NBC's Mike Bettes reports.
"It looked like a bomb had been dropped in the middle of town," he said of West Liberty. "Buildings had the walls standing and the roof gone. It was a terrible sight. It's going to be a long, long time to get that town on its feet."
President Barack Obama has called the governors of Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky to offer condolences and assure them the federal government was ready to help if needed.
Twister cleanup follows 'total devastation' as search for survivors wraps up
Even with life upended in so many ways, one family got a reminder that a deadly tornado can't uproot everything.
The home that Shalonda Kerr shares with her husband and Jack Russell terrier outside of Chelsea, Ind., was obliterated: The front wall was ripped clean, leaving the home looking eerily like a shaken dollhouse. An upended couch and a tipped-over fish tank lay in the rubble.
The mailbox was untouched. Its front hatch was tipped open, revealing a white piece of paper.
"Inside was a $300 IRS bill," Kerr said, laughing amid the ruins.
The Associated Press, Reuters, weather.com and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/05/10580677-snowy-weather-adds-to-tornado-survivors-misery
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