At Least 32 Dead After Storms Carrying Tornadoes Sweep Across US

A rash of violent storms spawning dozens of tornadoes swept across a large swath of the US over the weekend. The storms killed at least 32 people. It destroyed homes and businesses from Arkansas to New Jersey.

At least 11 states were affected by the storms. They are expected to continue at least through Tuesday. 48 million people across the central US could be impacted. 

“It is terrible what has happened in this community, this county, this state,” Tennessee Governor Bill Lee told The Associated Press (AP), after seeing how McNairy County was impacted. Lee said the storm arrived at the end of his “worst” week as governor. He had just left a funeral for a friend killed in the school shooting in Nashville last week. 

Nine McNairy residents lost their lives in that storm. In Belvidere, Illinois, a 50-year-old was killed. The storms also claimed the lives of four people in Wynne, Arkansas; three residents of Sullivan, Indiana; three in Crawford County, Illinois; and three in Memphis, Tennessee.

Residents of Alabama, Mississippi, and Delaware were also killed.

Jeffrey Day told the AP he called his daughter in Adamsville, Tennessee, when he saw that her town was in the path of the tornado. He reached her in a closet with her two young sons.

“‘What do I do, daddy?’” Day’s daughter asked him repeatedly. He recalled for the AP. “I didn’t know what to say.”

When the storm ended, Day’s daughter crawled out of her destroyed house with his grandsons.