US tornado death toll climbs

US: The death toll from a monster tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri, on Sunday rose to 123, with 750 people injured and many more missing, authorities said on Tuesday.

Rescue and recovery teams scoured the wreckage of the small Midwestern city, which was devastated by a high-velocity whirl of wind that destroyed about 2,000 buildings.

The threat of a new tornado hitting Joplin passed by late on Tuesday. But a line of storms plowed through Oklahoma on Tuesday, where at least five people were killed and many more injured in tornadoes near Oklahoma City. Two more people died in Kansas in storms there on Tuesday.

Rescuers in Joplin vowed to work as long as possible through the night searching for survivors. “There is always hope that you will find someone alive,” said city spokesman Dan Crain.

Among those missing was toddler Skyular Logsdon, whose red T-shirt and pants were found torn, rain-soaked and wrapped around a telephone pole.

The little boy has not been seen since Sunday night when the tornado ripped through the center of the town of 50,000 in southwest Missouri. His parents were found alive and were hospitalized, but the family home was demolished and the boy was lost in the whirling darkness.

Authorities said they were racing against the prospect of more bad weather as well as grim survival odds for anyone still trapped after the tornado uprooted trees, twisted cars into heaps of metal and destroyed homes, churches, schools and a line of restaurants and businesses.

The tornado that hit Joplin with winds of nearly 200 mph (328 kph), was the deadliest single twister in the United States since 1947, when a tornado in Woodland, Oklahoma, killed 181 people.

The funnel cloud cut a path nearly 6 miles (9.5 km) long and up to 3/4 of a mile (1-km) wide.

“Pretty much everybody in town knows somebody they’ve lost,” said Missouri Governor Jay Nixon.

JOPLIN, Wednesday, Reuters