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Storms Rumble Through Nation's Midsection, Killing at Least 33 By DAVID STOUT Tornadoes and fierce thunderstorms howled across the South, East and Midwest early today and on Sunday, killing at least 33 people, leaving hundreds more injured and missing and reducing some communities to piles of rubble. The turbulent weather, spawned by a deadly combination of unseasonably warm weather and a cold front from Canada, raked more than a dozen states from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. Tennessee appeared to be the state hardest hit, with at least 16 dead and 55 injured. The hamlet of Mossy Grove in rural East Tennessee was virtually obliterated by a tornado that struck Sunday evening, flattening buildings and killing at least seven people, law enforcement officials said. "It's mass destruction, death," Ken Morgan, an officer in nearby Oliver Springs, told The Associated Press. "Mossy Grove is destroyed." The toll was high elsewhere across the South and Midwest. At least 10 people were believed to have been killed in Alabama, and 5 in Ohio were reported dead. Heavy damage was reported in sections of Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and several other states. Survivors and rescue workers in communities thousands of miles apart awoke today to mind-boggling scenes of devastation: piles of lumber and bricks where homes had stood, cars lying in movie theaters, downed power lines thrashing and crackling on the ground, other power lines inert and dead and thousands of people were left without electricity. Rescuers worked under gray skies and pelting rain to pull survivors out of what had been their homes. Witnesses told of seeing their homes, or those of their neighbors, reduced to piles of bricks or scattered across fields like kindling wood. There were stories of people picked up by the winds, then set down again unscathed. Some people had brushes with death that they would remember the rest of their lives; other lives were cut off before they had really begun. Nor was the danger entirely gone by midday today. Even as searchers were combing wreckage for dead and injured from Western Pennsylvania to the Deep South, weather authorities warned that more storms were on the gray horizon. Tornado warnings were posted for sections of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. A severe thunderstorm with a developing tornado was reported moving northeast across north-central Virginia this morning. A twister was spotted moving east at 35 miles per hour across North Carolina at midmorning on a track to pass over Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg, the sprawling home to thousands of airborne troops. The final toll in death and injured was elusive, and was expected to remain so for many hours. By midday, 33 people had been counted dead and more than 200 injured. There was the possibility the toll would rise as officials learned more about what had happened in isolated hollows, farm areas and tiny villages, many of them cut off from the outside world since power and phone lines were ripped down. On the other hand, the authorities held out hope that many people in the "missing" category would turn up alive as communications were slowly restored. Tornadoes are most common from April to June, and they are most likely in the giant midcountry "mixing bowl," where hot air from the Gulf of Mexico and cool area from the North come together. But they can occur anywhere and at any time, if the conditions are right. A portent of the Tennessee destruction came on Sunday, with a record-high temperature in Nashville of 81 degrees, breaking the previous high of 78 in 1902, a National Weather Service meteorologist, Mark Rose, said. Meanwhile, a cold front moving in while warmth blanketed much of the state brought the eruption. "It really fueled these thunderstorms, that kind of heating," Mr. Rose said. Similar conditions arose across much of the South, East and Middle West. Some of the damage was wrought by old-fashioned thunderstorms, complete with lashing winds and golfball-sized hail. But the worst was done by tornadoes of various sizes and colors, including the ugly black funnels that those lucky enough to live through have described as sounding like freight trains. The aftermath was bizarre, horrific and heartbreaking. Continued 1 | 2 | Next>> Storms Rumble Through Nation's Midsection, Killing at Least 33 (Page 2 of 2) Reporters from The Tennessean in Nashville described a frightful scene in a field in East Tennessee: Pink housing insulation clung to trees. What had been a home interior lay in a line Estove, shower stall, sink and refrigerator stretched into a hay field, with a bathtub at the farthest point, more than 1,000 feet from the road. Tennessee officials said several of those who died apparently were trapped in cars. The dead included a 4-month-old child and a 10-year-old boy, the latter killed when a mobile home park was struck about 60 miles southeast of Nashville. On Interstate 24, just outside Manchester, Tenn., a tractor-trailer rig carrying tractor parts was blown off the road. "It actually picked me up and spun me around," the driver, William Fischer, 29, said. The rig landed upside down, and he walked away with a few bruises. In northern Alabama, giant hardwood trees crashed down on small houses and mobile homes. The smell of broken pine trees and oaks filled the early morning air around Carbon Hill, Ala., as the police stood watch outside the elementary school, where part of the roof was peeled away by the high winds and windows were blown out. Seven people were killed in the Carbon Hill vicinity, including two women found lying beside a road. Who died and who lived was often a matter of pure luck. Residents of Pickens County, Ga., were telling amazing stories of survival after overnight storms tore through homes and businesses, ripping a child from her father's arms and toppling gravestones. Among the lucky survivors were Brian Goode and his family, whose home in the Refuge community near Tate was smashed as they scrambled for cover. "We were all running to the back bathroom to get in the tub," Mr. Goode, a construction contractor, told The A.P.. "We made it to the kitchen and that was it. It came apart." Mr. Goode, his wife, Andrea, and their two children, Destiny, 6, and Kayla, 4, were all sucked out of the house. Kayla was pulled from her father's arms and was found at the foot of a tree near a pond. But everyone in the family lived. Survival also depended on quick thinking and quick action. In Van Wert, in northwestern Ohio, people who had just finished watching a movie were evacuated to the theater's bathrooms and hallways by the manager, who had heard an early tornado warning. This morning, the lobby and front of the theater were all that appeared intact, according to reports. Two arcade games and a popcorn machine still stood. The rest was torn away or collapsed. Rows of blue-cushioned seats Elittered with wood and plaster Esat open to the sky, and two wrecked cars came to rest where "The Santa Clause 2" had been showing, one in the front-row of seats, the other where the screen had been. But no one in the theater was hurt. Weather officials said the twister that hit the theater might have been swirling at 200 miles an hour or more. Whatever the speed, the tornado was strong enough to level the house of the theater owner, Jim Boyd, next door. "The Lord was looking out for us and our customers," Mr. Boyd said later. The Ohio theater episode was an example of lives saved by early warning and quick action Enot an i nfrequent occurrence, given modern weather forecasting. Indeed, the 10 deadliest tornado outbreaks in United States history, in terms of lives lost, occurred between 1899 and 1953, long before satellite forecasts and radar. And deadly as the latest outbreak was, it pales in comparison with the worst outbreak: 695 lives lost in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana on March 18, 1925. <