ravage blijft achter na superstorms V.S
dodental loopt nog steeds op bron cnn,
Manage Alerts | What Is This? BRADFORD, Tennessee (AP) -- Larry Taylor, who owns the only funeral home in this small town, plans to hold services later this week for four family members who were ripped from their home by a tornado.
Despite the loss, Taylor plans to help dress and prepare the bodies of his son and daughter-in-law and the couple's two young sons.
"I have to," he said. "It's peace of mind. It's my boy."
The bodies of Brad and Tanya Taylor, and their two sons, ages 5 and 3, were found 800 yards from their house after a vicious series of tornadoes carved a zigzagging path of destruction Sunday across eight states in the nation's midsection. At least 28 people were killed and thousands of buildings wrecked.
The family will be buried in two separate caskets, with each child alongside one of his parents.
"It basically took my life away. I don't really care if I see daylight tomorrow," Taylor said through tears. "I'd give everything I had for that not to have happened. Those little boys were my life."
The worst damage occurred along a 25-mile swath of rural western Tennessee, where 24 of the deaths occurred. All residents have been accounted for, Gov. Phil Bredesen said Tuesday. (Watch for blown-out walls and peeled-back roofs -- 2:18)
"We're in a tornado alley here, we get tornadoes in the spring and the summer, but this one was amazing," he told CBS' "The Early Show."
"Most of the houses, you can't count. They're just gone," said Roy Childress, who was part of a church relief crew that was delivering food and water to survivors Monday.
Severe storms also struck parts of Iowa, Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. Strong winds were blamed for at least three deaths in Missouri. A clothing store collapsed in southern Illinois, killing one man.
In Arkansas, Logan Hawley tried to escape by driving with a group of other people to a tornado shelter.
"We couldn't see anything," Hawley said. "It was just brown in front of us."
The car crashed at an intersection, so the six people inside had no choice but to sit terrified as the tornado passed.
"I just closed my eyes and hoped it was a dream," he said.
The brunt of the storms, some packing softball-sized hail, blasted an area between the small town of Newbern, about 80 miles northeast of Memphis, to Bradford. Twenty-four people were killed, including an infant and the grandparents who had been babysitting him. (Watch a man who drove through the tornado -- 2:52)
Bredesen said more than 1,000 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed and about 75 people injured, 17 of them critically. He asked President Bush to declare Dyer and Gibson counties federal disaster areas.
"Our first priority is helping those impacted to get back on their feet quickly and to bring back a sense of normalcy at a time when they need it most," said Bredesen, who planned to visit the area Tuesday.
Still without power
The Tennessee Valley Authority estimated that more than 18,000 customers in Tennessee and Kentucky were without power Monday.
The storms developed after a cold front approaching from the West slammed into a mass of warm, humid air, said Memphis meteorologist Jody Aaron. A tornado in Dyer County apparently had winds of 158 to 206 mph, making it an F3 on the Fujita scale used by the National Weather service to rate tornadoes.
The weather service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, said it had preliminary reports of 63 tornadoes. (Watch storage buildings shredded by the storm -- 1:30)
About a half-dozen tornadoes struck Arkansas and one destroyed nearly half the town of Marmaduke, according to a Fire Department official. Authorities cordoned off the town after a gas line ruptured, and three people remained unaccounted for Monday.
"Almost every single structure in Marmaduke has minor to moderate damage, but almost 50 percent of it is totally destroyed," acting fire commander Chris Franks said. Much of the town also was damaged by a tornado in 1997.
Brick shells were all that remained of some houses, while corrugated metal used as roofing stood draped around several trees. The storm rolled railroad cars onto their sides, several feet away from the nearest track.
Hail 4 inches in diameter slammed right through the roof of one mobile home in Arkansas, weather service meteorologist Newton Skiles said.
About 30 miles from Newbern, a tornado caused extensive damage to the southeast Missouri city of Caruthersville, although Mayor Diane Sayre said there were no known deaths in the city of 6,700.
In southern Illinois, a man died when a clothing store collapsed in the St. Louis suburb of Fairview Heights. An off-duty police officer survived for nearly an hour in the store's debris before he was pulled to safety.
"I'm so blessed," Doug Young said Monday from his hospital bed in Belleville, where he had a bruised chest and 10 stitches in a knee. "I was thankful to God that he delivered my prayers."
In downtown Indianapolis, tornado-force winds shattered dozens of windows in a high-rise office building. The storm hit just after thousands of people had left a free outdoor concert by John Mellencamp held as part of the NCAA men's Final Four basketball tournament. (Watch fans scramble for
