Rescue teams and anguished families yesterday were desperately trying to track down some 1,500 people listed as missing since a tornado ripped through a Missouri town killing 123 residents.
Emergency teams were also doing a fourth painstaking sweep through the devastated homes of Joplin, buoyed after two survivors were found alive last Tuesday after almost 48 hours trapped in the wreckage.
But traumatised residents, many of whom are now living in special shelters, were rattled late Tuesday after new storms roared across the neighbouring state of Oklahoma, leaving at least eight dead.
In what is one of the worst tornado seasons on record after a series of twisters killed hundreds in southern US states last month, Sunday’s twister in Joplin is now the worst single tornado to strike America in six decades.
“It is a devastating scene. I have seen a lot of tornado damage in the past, but never such a wide path, such a large path,” said Missouri public safety communications chief Mike O’Connell.
The main task now was to try to locate people listed by desperate relatives as missing since Sunday’s tornado flattened everything along a path six kilometres long and three quarters of a mile (over a kilometre) wide.
“This is our priority,” O’Connell told AFP, stressing not all the missing were feared dead.
“These are people whose whereabouts are not immediately known,” he said, adding some of them could be among the 750 people being treated in hospital.
“Afterwards, you couldn’t email, you couldn’t get on your cell phones. Many people left the area. Some people have been reunited and failed to notify us. So we will be carefully going through to see if there are any duplications.”
But heart-breaking stories were being replayed hourly on the local radio, and on social networking sites as people searched for their loved ones, including panicked parents separated from their children.
The family of 16-month-old Skyular Logsdon have launched an anxious search using the social network Facebook for the baby boy ripped from his mother’s arms by the powerful winds.
“No, he has not been found,” his grandmother, Milissa Burns, posted sadly on the site early Wednesday. “I’m following all leads both good and bad. I will let u all know as soon as we know something either way... I just pray we all can work together on this. God bless.”
Teenager Lantz Hare is also missing since being out driving with friends when the massive funnel cloud, with winds of up to 320 kilometres an hour, hit Joplin with devastating force.
“He was on the phone with another friend, we believe, when the tornado actually hit the car. His friend Ryan says he could literally hear the swoosh came through and the phone went dead,” his mother Michelle told CNN.
“I was not able to recontact him after the one phone call. Of course, I called, just repeatedly called and called and called.”
The American Red Cross has set up a website for people to list the names of the missing, and to report if they are safe and sound.
And Joplin city manager Mark Rohr told reporters that rescue efforts were being driven by an increasing sense of urgency, saying: “People’s lives are at stake.”
“We are still in search and rescue mode, and will be for the foreseeable future,” he said Tuesday.
More than 8,000 structures in this town bordering the heartland states of Kansas and Oklahoma were damaged or destroyed when the twister came roaring through with just a 24-minute warning.
In yet another tragedy, more twisters hit Oklahoma late Tuesday. “We’ve got pretty extensive damage across the state,” Jerry Smith, emergency management director for Canadian County, told AFP.
Another state official said: “We’re in the process of damage assessment,” adding that although it was pretty bad “it’s nothing in comparison to Joplin.”
Hopes were fading yesterday in Joplin after 17 people were pulled alive last Monday from the rubble, but only two survivors were found on Tuesday.
US President Barack Obama, on a visit to London, yesterday again sent his condolences to the people of Missouri, ahead of a visit to the area on Sunday.