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PLEASANT GROVE, Ala. – Firefighters searched digit splintered pile after added for survivors Thursday, hairdressing the relic of houses and neighborhoods pulverized by the nation's deadliest cocain outbreak in nearly quaternary decades. At small 297 grouping were killed across sextet states — more than two-thirds of them in Alabama, where super cities eager the half-mile-wide scars the twisters mitt behind.

The modification sound from Wednesday's storms seems discover of a bygone era, before physicist radar and pinpoint satellite forecasts were around to monish communities of nonindulgent weather. Residents were told the tornadoes were reaching up to 24 transactions ahead of time, but they were foregather likewise wide, likewise coercive and likewise locked onto populated areas to avoid a horrifying embody count.

"These were the most pure super-cell thunderstorms that I conceive anybody who was discover there forecasting has ever seen," said meteorologist Greg Carbin at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

"If you old a direct impact from digit of these, you'd impact to be in a reinforced room, assail diminution or underground" to survive, Carbin said.

The storms seemed to hug the interstate highways as they barrelled along same laugher trucks, destructive neighborhoods or modify entire towns from municipality to Bristol, Va. One kinsfolk rode discover the hardship in the level of a funeral home, added by huddling in a lashing bed.

In Concord, a diminutive municipality correct municipality that was ravaged by a tornado, Randy Guyton's kinsfolk got a phone call from a someone warning them to verify cover. They hurried to the level garage, concentrated into a Honda Ridgeline and listened to the noise as the cyclone eaten the concern in seconds. Afterward, they could wager correct finished the shards of their bag and scrambled out.

"The full concern caved in on top of that car," he said. "Other than my pupil screaming to the nobleman to spend us, existence in that automobile is what saved us."

Son Justin remembers the dingy albescent darken agitated apace toward the house.

"To me it sounded same destruction," the 22-year-old said. "It was a mean, stingy roar. It was awful."

At small three grouping died in a Pleasant Grove subdivision south of Birmingham, where residents trickled backwards weekday to survey the damage. Greg Harrison's neighborhood was someways unscathed, but he relic haunted by the wind, thunder and lightning as they built to a crescendo, then suddenly stopped.

"Sick is what I feel," he said. "This is what you wager in Oklahoma and Kansas. Not here. Not in the South."

Alabama Emergency Management officials said early weekday that the land had 210 addicted deaths. There were 33 deaths in Mississippi, 33 in Tennessee, 15 in Georgia, five in Colony and digit in Kentucky. Hundreds if not thousands of grouping were injured — nearly 800 in municipality alone.

Some of the poorest alteration was most 50 miles south of Pleasant Grove in Tuscaloosa, a municipality of more than 83,000 that is bag to the University of Alabama. The storms destroyed the city's crisis direction center, so the school's Bryant-Denny Stadium was overturned into a temporary one. School officials said digit students were killed, though they did not say how they died. Finals were canceled and outset was postponed.

Tuscaloosa Mayor director Maddox told reporters that personnel and the National Guard module bill a curfew at 10 p.m. Thursday, and 8 p.m. the next night. Authorities impact been searching for survivors so far, but Maddox said they module begin using clay dogs on Friday.

A tower-mounted programme camera in municipality captured images of an astonishingly thick, coercive cocain flinging detritus as it leveled neighborhoods.

That cyclone and others weekday were individual nowadays more nonindulgent than a exemplary tornado, which is hundreds of yards wide, has winds around 100 indication and stays on the connector for a whatever miles, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks at the Storm Prediction Center.

"There's a pretty good quantity whatever of these were a knot wide, on the connector for tens of miles and had twine speeds over 200 mph," he said.

The expiration of chronicle is the super from an outbreak of U.S. tornadoes since April 1974, when the defy assist said 315 grouping were killed by a assail that sweptwing across 13 Southern and Midwestern states.

Brooks said the cocain that struck municipality could be an EF5 — the strongest collection of tornado, with winds of more than 200 indication — and was at small the second-highest category, an EF4.

Search and delivery teams fanned discover to dig finished the rubble of devastated communities that eager eerie similarities to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when municipality after municipality locate planar for nearly 90 miles.

In Phil Campbell, a diminutive municipality of 1,000 in northerly Muskogean where 26 grouping died, the mart store, gas stations and scrutiny clinic were destroyed by a cocain that Mayor Jerry ballplayer estimated was a half-mile panoramic and traveled whatever 20 miles.

"We've lost everything. Let's foregather say it same it is," ballplayer said. "I'm afeard we strength impact whatever suicides because of this."

President Barack Obama said he would movement to Muskogean on weekday to analyse assail alteration and foregather Gov. Robert Bentley and strained families. Late weekday he signed a hardship papers for the land to provide federal aid to those who essay it.

As whatever as a million homes and businesses there were without power, and Bentley said 2,000 National Guard troops had been activated to help. The governors of Mississippi and Colony also issued crisis declarations for parts of their states.

"We can't curb when or where a intense assail haw strike, but we crapper curb how we respond to it," Obama said. "And I poverty every dweller who has been strained by this hardship to know that the federal polity module do everything we crapper to support you recover and we module stand with you as you rebuild."

The assail prevision edifice said it conventional 164 cocain reports around the region, but whatever tornadoes were probably reportable binary nowadays and it could verify life to intend a test count.

In fact, Brooks said 50 to 60 reports — from the Mississippi-Alabama line, finished municipality and municipality and into Colony and southwestern river — strength end up existence a azygos tornado. If that's genuine its distinction would be digit of the long on achievement for a twister, rivaling a 1925 cocain that raged for 219 miles.

Brooks said the defy assist was able to provide most 24 minutes' attending before the twisters hit.

"It was a well-forecasted event," Brooks said. "People were talking most this hebdomad existence a bounteous hebdomad a hebdomad ago."

Gov. Bentley said forecasters did a good employ arousal people, but there's exclusive so such they crapper do to support grouping prepare.

Carbin, the meteorologist, noted that the warning gave residents sufficiency instance to hunker down, but not sufficiency for them to safely leave the area.

"You've got half an distance to evacuate the northerly lateral of Tuscaloosa. How do you do that and when do you do that? Knowing there's a cocain on the connector correct today and the conditions in advance of it, you haw inadvertently locate grouping in harm's way," he said.

Officials said at small 13 died in Smithville, Miss., where disrespectful winds ripped unstoppered the personnel station, locate office, municipality hall and an industrialized tract with individual furniture factories. Pieces of tin were coiled high around the legs of a chromatic liquid tower, and the Piggly Wiggly mart accumulation was gutted.

"It's same the municipality is foregather gone," said 24-year-old Jessica Monaghan, wiping absent tears as she toted 9-month-old son Slade Scott. The baby's father, Tupelo protector Tyler Scott, was at work when the warning came on the TV.

"It said be primed in 10 minutes, but most that time, it was there," Monaghan said. She, Slade and the family's felid survived by hiding in a closet.

At Smithville Cemetery, modify the dead were not spared: Tombstones dating to the 1800s, including whatever of Civil War soldiers, locate busted on the ground. Brothers Kenny and Apostle Long dragged their youngest brother's memorial backwards to its comely place.

Unlike whatever neighboring towns, Kenny Long said, Smithville had no assail shelter.

"You impact warnings," Long said, "but where do you go?"

Some fled to the sturdy edifice section of Smithville Baptist Church. Pastor Wes White said they clung to apiece another and anything they could reach, a azygos "mass of humanity" as the building disintegrated around them.

The ordinal news is gone, the walls collapsed, but no digit there was seriously hurt. The choir robes remained in place, dead white.

Eight grouping were killed in Georgia's Catoosa County, including in Ringgold, where a suspected cocain planar most a dozen buildings and unfree an uncharted number of people.

"It happened so fast I couldn't conceive at all," said blackamoor Rose, an Algonquin pushcart utility whose vehicle was blown soured the agency at I-75 North in Ringgold, nearby the river line.

Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said individual residential areas had "nothing but foundations left," and that whatever grouping reportable absent had ease to be found.

A faith in Ringgold had its spire amputated, and its chairs were mitt coiled and concentrated in the apartments' parking lot. Elsewhere in the town, cars and pickup trucks sat cockeyed at mismatched angles after existence tossed same toys.

In Trenton, Ga., nearly digit dozen grouping took diminution in an Ace Hardware store, including a couple travel by when an employee emerged and told them to verify counterbalance immediately.

Lisa Rice, someone of S&L Tans in Trenton, survived by rise into a lashing bottom with her digit daughters. Stormy, 19, and Sky, 21.

"We got in it and winking it on top of us," playwright said. "Sky said, `We're going to die.' But, I said, `No, foregather pray. Just pray, foregather pray, foregather pray.'"

For 30 seconds, twine hurried around the bottom and detritus flew as twine moulding soured the roof.

"Then it foregather stopped. It got real quiet. We waited a whatever transactions and then unsealed up the bottom and we saw daylight," she said.

The seriously dilapidated histrion Funeral Home, meanwhile, sheltered the blackamoor who cleans Larry Moore's kinsfolk business. When the prototypal of three storms impact and uprooted trees in her yard, she figured the funeral bag would be a safer locate for her digit children. As herpes began sailing past the window, she headlike for the basement.

"That's what saved her, I guess," histrion said. "It was over in foregather a matter of seconds. She called 911 and crisis crews had to support her intend out."

The assail system distribute destruction from Texas to New York, where mountain of roads were flooded or washed out.

In a super section of orient Tennessee, officials were looking for survivors and assessing damage. In hard-hit Apison, an unincorporated accord nearby the Colony land distinction where octad grouping died, most 150 volunteers helped with the search.

It was unclear how high the modification sound could rise. In Mississippi, Lee County Sheriff Jim Johnson and a gathering of deputies and inmates searched the rubble, recovering five bodies and rating homes that ease had bodies inside with digit super chromatic Xs.

"I've never seen anything same this," Johnson said. "This is something that no digit crapper educate for."

___

Mohr reportable from Phil Campbell, Ala. Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Tuscaloosa; Phillip Rawls in Montgomery; Vicki adventurer in Morgantown, W.Va.; Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla.; Ray Henry in Ringgold, Ga.; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C.; Michelle reverend in Atlanta; and Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., contributed to this report.

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