(Reuters) – A fierce tornado blasted through Little Rock, Arkansas, and adjacent towns yesterday, ripping away roofs and walls from many buildings, flipping over vehicles, and injuring dozens of people.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences hospital, the region’s only major trauma center, declared a level-1 mass casualty alert after the tornado struck Little Rock, the state’s capital and most populous city, at mid-afternoon.
The twister was spawned by one of a numerousviolent thunderstorms raking a vast swath of the U.S. heartland as part of a much larger expanse of extreme spring weather.
“At this time, we know of 24 people who have been hospitalized at Little Rock hospitals and we are not aware of any fatalities in Little Rock,” Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said on Twitter.
Separately, Baptist Health Medical Center in the adjoining town of North Little Rock, just across the Arkansas River from the capital, reported treating 11 patients from the storm, one of them in critical condition. Local television station KTHV-TV reported one storm-related death in North Little Rock, but that could not be immediately confirmed.
Between five and 10 other people injured by the twister were treated at the emergency department of the Unity Health hospital in nearby Jacksonville, administrator Kevin Burton said.
Television station KAIT8-TV in Jonesboro, Arkansas, quoted Richard Dennis, police chief of the town of Wynne, about 100 miles east of Little Rock near the Tennessee border, as saying, “There is total destruction throughout the town,” and that dozens of people had been trapped in the storm.
But KAIT also quoted the coroner as saying no fatalities were reported as of 6 p.m. Central Time.
Little Rock’s Scott said property damage in the capital city was “extensive,” although the full scale of devastation remained unclear.
“We’re operating in red status, with all hands on deck,” said Aaron Gilkey, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Emergency Medical Services (MEMS) agency.
Aerial footage posted by The Weather Channel showed a heavily damaged area of the city spanning several blocks with numerous homes missing roofs and walls, some of them collapsed, and overturned vehicles littering streets. KATV posted an image of a heavily damaged high school in the town of Wynne.
The turbulent weather came one week after a previous swarm of thunderstorms unleashed a deadly tornado that devastated the Mississippi town of Rolling Fork, destroying many of the community’s 400 homes and killing 26 people.
