Fast-moving tornado kills five at high school
ENTERPRISE, Ala. – With no time to send students home as storms raced their way, officials herded Erin Garcia and her high school classmates into the halls.
Outside, the skies grew so dark that lights at the airport came on in the middle of the day.
Then the tornado sirens started up.
And inside Enterprise High School, the lights went out.
“I was just sitting there praying the whole time,” said Garcia, a 17-year-old senior.
As students and staff took shelter, a twister blew out the school’s walls and collapsed its roof, killing at least five people Thursday. The storms killed at least seven people in the state, though the death toll varied wildly, with officials reporting 18 dead at one point, then backing off that figure.
With a search of the high school continuing into the night, “the exact number is honestly not known,” said John Pallas, the Coffee County emergency management director in Enterprise.
At least one other person was killed elsewhere in Enterprise, a city of about 23,000. Another died across the state in rural Millers Ferry, where trailer homes were flipped and trees toppled, officials said.
The burst of tornadoes was part of a larger line of thunderstorms and snowstorms that stretched from Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. Authorities blamed a tornado for the death of a 7-year-old girl in Missouri, and twisters also were reported in Kansas.
A tornado damaged the Sumter Regional Hospital in Americus in southwest Georgia, hospital spokesman Ed Farr said late Thursday. The state emergency management agency reported injuries and two deaths there, but Farr said he could not confirm that because the hospital was busy moving patients.
Meanwhile, heavy, wet snow and blizzard conditions hit the Plains and Midwest, shutting down hundreds of miles of interstate highways as snowplows were pulled off roads in white-out conditions.
Schools closed in several states, and hundreds of flights were canceled. Two people were killed when their car overturned in North Dakota, and one person died after shoveling snow in Nebraska.
Garcia said students had gathered in hallways around 11 a.m. as a precaution. Some were allowed to have parents pick them up, and school buses lined up to take the others around 1 p.m., she said, but the warning sirens came on.
As night fell, crews dug through piles of rubble beneath portable lights at the 1,300-student school, looking for other victims.
President Bush, who visited New Orleans on Thursday, was briefed on the tornadoes by senior staff and called Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt, White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said aboard Air Force One.