WYNNE, Ark. (AP) — Storms that spawned possibly dozens of tornadoes killed at least 26 people in small towns and cities across the South and Midwest, tore a path through the Arkansas capital, collapsed the roof of a packed concert venue in Illinois and stunned the world in throughout the area on Saturday with the extent of the damage.
Confirmed or suspected tornadoes in at least eight states destroyed homes and businesses, snapped trees and devastated neighborhoods across a wide swath of the country. The dead include at least nine in one Tennessee county, four in the small town of Wayne, Arkansas, three in Sullivan, Indiana, and four in Illinois.
Other deaths from the storms that struck Friday night into Saturday were reported in Alabama and Mississippi, along with one near Little Rock, Arkansas, where city officials said more than 2,600 buildings were in the tornado's path.
Residents of Wynne, a community of about 8,000 people 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of Memphis, Tennessee, woke up Saturday to find the high school's roof had been blown off and its windows broken. Huge trees lay on the ground, their trunks turned to mold. Broken walls, windows and roofs crushed homes and businesses.
Debris was scattered inside the houses' shells and on the lawns: clothes, insulation, toys, broken furniture, a truck with broken windows.
Ashley Macmillan said she, her husband and their children huddled with their dogs in a small bathroom as a tornado passed, “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead.” A falling tree severely damaged their home, but they were unharmed.
“We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes screeching. And then he calmed down,” he said.
Recovery was already underway, with workers using chainsaws and bulldozers to clear the area and utility crews restoring power.
Nine people died in McNairy County, Tennessee, east of Memphis, according to Patrick Sheehan, director of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.
“The majority of the damage has been done to homes and residential areas,” said David Leckner, the mayor of Adamsville.
Gov. Bill Lee drove to the county Saturday to tour the devastation and comfort residents. He said the storm capped the “worst” week of his tenure as governor, days after a school shooting in Nashville that killed six people, including a family friend, whose funeral he and his wife, Maria, had attended earlier on the same day.
“It's terrible what happened to this community, this county, this state,” Lee said. “But it looks like your community has done what Tennessee communities do, and that's rallying and responding.”
Jeffrey Day said he called his daughter after seeing on the news that their Adamsville community had been hit. Huddled in a closet with her two-year-old son as the storm passed, she answered the phone screaming.
“She kept asking me, 'What should I do, Dad?' Day said tearfully. “I didn't know what to say.”
After the storm passed, his daughter crawled out of her damaged home and over barbed wire and drove to nearby family. On Saturday night, baby clothes were still strewn around the area.
In Memphis, police spokesman Christopher Williams said by email late Saturday that there were three deaths believed to be weather-related: two children and an adult who died when a tree fell on a home.
Tennessee officials warned that the same weather conditions from Friday night are expected to return on Tuesday.
In Belvidere, Illinois, part of the roof of the Apollo Theater collapsed as about 260 people attended a heavy metal concert. A 50-year-old man was pulled from the rubble.
“I sat with him and held his hand and (told him), 'It's going to be OK.' I really didn't know much else what to do,” Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO-TV.
The man was dead by the time emergency workers arrived. Officials said 40 others were injured, including two with life-threatening injuries.
On Saturday, crews cleaned up around the Apollo, with forklifts pulling loose bricks. Business owners picked up broken glass and covered broken windows.
In Crawford County, Illinois, three people were killed and eight injured when a tornado touched down around New Hebron, said Bill Burke, chairman of the county board.
Sheriff Bill Rutan said 60 to 100 families were displaced.
“We had emergency crews digging people out of their basements because the house has collapsed on them, but luckily they had this safe place to go,” Rutan said at a news conference.
That tornado was not far from where three people died in Sullivan County, Indiana, about 95 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Indianapolis.
Sullivan Mayor Clint Lamb said at a news conference that an area south of the county seat of about 4,000 “is virtually unrecognizable right now” and that several people were rescued overnight. There were reports of up to 12 injured, he said.
“I'm really, really shocked that there isn't more in terms of human issues,” he said, adding that recovery “is going to be a very long process.”
In the Little Rock area, at least one person was killed and more than 50 were injured, some critically.
The National Weather Service said the tornado was a high-grade EF3 twister with wind speeds of up to 165 mph (265 km/h) and a 25-mile (40-kilometer) path.
Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was eating lunch at home when a roar roared through his neighborhood, prompting him to hide in the laundry room as rocks fell and windows shattered. When he came out, the house was mostly rubble.
“Everything around me is sky,” Shahed-Ghaznavi recalled Saturday. He barely slept Friday night.
“When I closed my eyes, I couldn't sleep, I imagined I was here,” he said Saturday outside his home.
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared a state of emergency and activated the National Guard.
Another suspected tornado killed a woman in northern Alabama's Madison County, officials said, and in northern Mississippi's Pontotoc County, one death and four injuries were confirmed.
Tornadoes also caused damage in eastern Iowa and shattered windows northeast of Peoria, Illinois.
The storms came hours after President Joe Biden visited Rolling Fork, Mississippi, where tornadoes last week devastated parts of the city.
It could take days to determine the exact number of tornadoes from the most recent event, said Bill Bunding, chief of forecasting at the Storm Prediction Center. There were also hundreds of reports of large hail and damaging winds, he said.
“It's a pretty active day,” he said. “But this is not unprecedented.”
More than 530,000 homes and businesses were without power as of noon Saturday, more than 200,000 of them in Ohio, according to PowerOutage.us.
The widespread storm system also brought wildfires to the southern Plains, with authorities in Oklahoma reporting nearly 100 of them Friday. At least 32 people were said to have been injured and more than 40 houses were destroyed.
The storms also brought blizzard conditions to the Upper Midwest.
The threat of tornadoes and hail remained in the Northeast, including parts of Pennsylvania and New York.
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DeMillo reported from Little Rock. Associated Press writers across the country contributed to this report, including Kimberlee Kruesi in Adamsville, Tennessee. Harm Venhuizen in Belvidere, Illinois, and Corey Williams in Detroit.
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