KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Shaken residents spent New Year`s Day sifting through the wreckage wrought by tornadoes that moved land in various states on the final day of 2010, killing seven people in two states and injuring dozens.
Six of the victims - three in Missouri and 3 in Arkansas - died Friday as tornadoes fueled by unusually warm air pummeled the South and Midwest.
A seventh victim who was injured Friday near the Missouri town of Rolla died Saturday at a hospital in Columbia, said Bruce Southard, the head of the Rolla Rural Fire Department.
The woman, whose name wasn`t immediately released, was entertaining a friend, Alice Cox, 69, of Belle, Mo. in her trailer when the tornado hit.
Southard said nothing was left of the trailer except for the form and that the twister scattered debris 40 to 50 yards from where the trailer had sat. The woman was found under a pile of debris, Southard said.
"It`s like you set a bomb off in it," Southard said in a telephone interview. "It just annihilated it."
At a raise that was not far away, 21-year-old Megan Ross and her 64-year-old grandmother, Loretta Anderson, died when a tornado hit where their family lived among three mobile homes and two frame houses, Dent County Emergency Management Coordinator Brad Nash said.
The National Weather Service determined the place was hit by a weak tornado that was 50 yards wide and traveled less than a mile.
In the northwestern Arkansas hamlet of Cincinnati, Gerald Wilson, 88, and his wife, Mamie, 78, died in their family and Dick Murray, 78, died after being caught by the ramp while milking cows, Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder said.
Severe storms, including possible tornadoes, also ripped through central Mississippi on New Year`s Eve, and emergency teams were working Saturday to follow the damage. The National Weather Service in Jackson reported at least 3 people suffer and extensive structural damage. No one was killed. The storms knocked down trees and power lines. About 6 inches of rain fell in places, leading to flash flooding.
Ed Agre, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in Jackson, and other forecasters at the National Weather Service`s building at the Jackson airport were forced into a tornado shelter when winds hit 60 miles per hour.
"It was pretty intense," Agre said.
The Clarion-Ledger newspaper in Jackson reported that the storm forced the elimination of some 200 people from the Jackson-Evers International Airport, where a possible tornado was reported crossing a runway. The aerodrome was constrained to run on generators and a hangar was damaged, officials said.
Power was knocked out to almost 20,000 customers, and by Saturday afternoon about 10,000 remained without power, Entergy Mississippi reported.
In Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon was spending New Year`s Day touring damage from the force that also caused damage in near St. Louis.
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