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Subscribe to RSSAs the Friday storm that killed dozens dies down, the scale of the damage is hard to comprehend for those cleaning up debris. NBC's Tom Costello reports.
HENRYVILLE, Ind. -- The search for tornado victims was wrapping up Sunday, but the cleanup was only beginning, especially along a 52-mile-long stretch in Indiana where the scene was best described as "total devastation."
With a light snow and cold temperatures adding to the misery in places like hard-hit Henryville, Indiana officials were able to announce that no one else was still reported missing in the state where 12 died. Kentucky was hardest hit, with 20 deaths.
The next phase -- cleanup and providing security -- is just starting, Indiana State Police Sgt. Jerry Gooden told NBC's TODAY show.
"We’ve got about a four or five county area here, about a 50-mile stretch of area … that's total destruction," he said, referring to the fact that a twister with 175 mph winds was on the ground for 52 miles. A second, smaller twister on Friday in the area added to the destruction.
TODAY's Lester Holt speaks to a man who captured amazing video of one of the tornadoes that ripped through Indiana on Friday.
Crews worked to move downed power lines and clear debris, and residents began putting tarps over torn apart homes to prevent further damage.
Meanwhile, the more fortunate brought donations including diapers, blankets and food to area churches.
"That's what people do. It's no biggie. It's because we care. They are our neighbors," said Brenda Parson as she brought a carload of donations to the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Henryville.
In one sign of hope amid the destruction, a 2-year-old girl, orphaned by the tornado, was found alive but badly hurt in a field in southeast Indiana miles from her home after a twister cut through the area.
The toddler, who remained in critical condition in a Kentucky hospital, was with members of her extended family. But her parents, a 2-month-old sister and a 3-year-old brother, were all killed, said Cis Gruebbel, a spokeswoman for Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville.
Viewers submitted images of the tornado swarm.
The violent storms raised fears that 2012 will be another bad year for tornadoes after 550 deaths were blamed on twisters last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the National Weather Service.
In the northern Kentucky town of Crittenden, where tornadoes ripped roofs off houses and damaged apartment blocks, low-security prisoners in orange jackets were brought in to help with clean-up efforts.
In another hard-hit Kentucky town, 48-year-old carpenter Kevin Stambaugh described how he survived a twister that killed his two neighbors, who he said were found dead huddled together in their kitchen. He said he also lost 25 horses in the storm.
"The windows were shattered and shards of glass were swirling around near my head," he told Reuters outside a church in the town of Morning View, adding that wind had pushed him down the stairs to his basement and pinned him between a bar and a wall.
View images from the destruction.
At least 300 people came to the Piner Baptist Church, advertised as a relief center, to volunteer after the storm.
"Being from here, born and raised, the hardest thing is knowing that the houses I grew up seeing every day are gone. There are no words," said volunteer Amy Heeger, 38, who works for a car auction company but headed for the church to help out.
Reuters contributed to this report.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
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....and yet another year of God destroying the red states...and the Federal gov bailing them out...and all-the-while the folks there are voting to cut taxes that help pay for the reconstruction of their dry-walled, poorly regulated, straw houses.
EF5 tornadoes will crumble concrete and brick, make steel look like egg noodles and suck people out of their basements. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. The Federal govt has to help states completely rebuild electricity, communications, and sewer infrastructure. It's irrational to think they can do it themselves.
Red state/blue state is a fallacy. In Red States there are democrats and in Blue states there are republicans and in both examples there are independents. People need help no matter what their political ideas are, were or may be in the future.
Mike Davis, your comment is so ridiculous it's hard to know if you're serious or just being sarcastic.
I think he was being facetious with the red state biz--kinda turning the tables on the rhetoric from the religious faithful when such an event occurs. Get it?
To try to turn a complete devastation into a political statement is totally unreasonable for even the most liberal. Have some compassion and caring and put aside political agendas and political irrationalities for once in your life. This outbreak had nothing to do with politics, religion, or anything inbetween. And for someone foolish enough to vote for such irrationality is to show a total lack of compassion and caring for life, just caring for political "hay" out of misery. I used to think "left", but if this is an example, I'm going to have to move towards the "right" some more.
you're an idiot
Leave it to some to bring politics into everything; never mind that the difference between the two 'parties' we have now is as subtle as the difference betwixt the five shades of off-white eggshell one can paint their wall or ceiling.
Cyclic events of weather, broadened out enough to become what is gradual climate change, have happened throughout history. As winds aloft and oceanic currents change, years of El Nina vs. El Nino, we're going to see periods of storms... bad ones. Doubt the tornadoes care whether or not you're into blue or red (if they had brains, they'd laugh at any that proclaim one over the other) and when they, or other forces of nature, make life hard for or take lives from fellow Americans, that's all I think of, and do what I can to help or at least offer help.
I don't come with baskets of food, and ask which clown you support then decide whom gets what.
You're not only an embarassment, but the reason we're treading water until we will drown.....
Mike Davis, I voted to collapse your comment as it has nothing to do with this article.
You are a sick person..get help immediately
now onto the topic at hand
I send good will for all involved in this devastation. I have lived through two serious events of devastation. One thing was clearly evident and that was "everyone there was HELPING everyone that needed it".
All ages, races, religion and political views were GONE and only HUMANITY stood as ONE. No one cared about your political view or color. All they cared about was HELPING there fellow man through a HORRIBLE time.
My heartfelt sympathies to the lost ones and my deepest respect for those with boots on the ground at this time helping.
in response to Mike Davis: Another brain dead superstition following bible thumper has spoken! You should be the poster child for why organized religion needs to be made illegal. In the alternative, time to start taxing organized religion for the business that it is. Churches should be divesting their assets to help these victims, not government... Oh thats right... I forgot...if churches divested their assets to help those in need, those running the churches would not be able to live like kings off the beliefs of fools.
Mike Davis - God was at work here, in the form of friends and families doing what we could to help our neighbors get through this mess. No straw houses here. This big, bad, wind knocked down rock walls, brick walls, wooden walls, and killed a few folks seeking shelter in same. What a douche-bag you are. It's a shame you weren't here. You'd probably look better with a broken 2 x 4 in one eye, and a tampon blown through the other. This truly is a mess. Nothing but the best to those trying to recover. And by the way, haven't seen the Feds in here yet. I hope it stays that way. OH-KY-IN can take care of themselves.
Collapse if you want - the fact still remains that they're building cheap homes made of drywall and fiberglass right in tornado ally....okay so maybe it's not God.... maybe it's survival of the fittest!! And now they beg for tax dollars when they vote to give none!! Forgive me if my pity is lacking.
You're an idiot Mike. We have building codes here too moron.
Horrendous. The pictures of the devastation and the descriptions of deaths, injuries and destruction is awful. We all cry for the victims and pray for their quick and complete recoveries. Let's hope they can repair the damage to their bodies and their lives.
Collapse if you want - the fact still remains that they're building cheap homes made of drywall and fiberglass right in tornado ally....okay so maybe it's not God.... maybe it's survival of the fittest!! And now they beg for tax dollars after they vote to give none!! Forgive me if my pity is lacking.
Nothing to say about this devastation except sorry for the people.
Good luck, Indiana. This just happened to my hometown, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, last April. It's a traumatic shock but you will all pull together and get each other through it. Remember to comfort and find comfort in your neighbors.
I can't imagine a 52 mile stretch of destruction. I don't want to bring politics into this, but I sure hope Daniels applies for all the federal aid he can get his hands on to help these people. Whole towns are going to have to be rebuilt and I hope this at least serves as some kind of meeting ground for this country to put their differences aside and get things done. How he handles this is going to measure what kind of presidential candidate he would be in 2016. Most of the hard work is going to be done at the local level by volunteers, and speaking for my community at least, the volunteer work ethic is phenomenal.
Hard to conceive of entire towns leveled.
Not to politicize this, but this country needs to start taking care of its own, and forget about nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are pouring millions of $$ down never ending tubes for absolutely no reason, and very little return. They still hate America, and always will. As a former Hoosier myself, I offer all of the good people in southern Indiana my heartfelt prayers and very best wishes.
If this was Afghanistan, or Iraq or any other of the countries we spend billions on the money would just be rolling in to help them but here the government turns a blind eye.
Lady Cat--what makes you think that "the government" is going to turn a "blind eye"? The "government" is already involved (local government), the "government" is already helping (the Kentucky National Guard is already out in force at the governor's order), and the "government" is already being asked to expedite aid (the Kentucky governor has asked for aid to be expedited because there really isn't any question that Kentucky qualifies--proving one qualifies can sometimes eat up time).
It kills me that the same people who want smaller federal government then want the federal government to immediately take over in events such as this one. Emergency aid is usually handled on a local level--the local people ask for state aid, then the state asks for federal aid. The federal government doesn't just cruise in and take over unless there has been a collapse of local and state government forces (and, usually, only then when they have been invited in, first).
When millions upon millions of dollars are spent on this clean-up--funded by the federal government--do you have any plans to come back and comment? I guarantee you that the Kentucky governor already knows about how much money he's going to get and from whom--why don't you ask him?
Okay, where is Jollie & All those Wealthy Americans offering help??..No where to be seen huh, this is NOT a Foreign Country, this is what America is about TODAY...ALL TAKE & NO GIVE & here WE PATRONIZE these Creatures..MESSED UP MAN, REALLY MESSED UP........
There are wealthy people--including Jolie and Pitt--who are still helping out in New Orleans. Again, why is it that when something like this happens, the conservatives who think that everyone should be responsible for themselves and pick themselves up by their own bootstraps start whining that the aid isn't quick enough.
Why didn't Kentucky have a better plan in place? Why didn't the individual home owners make sure they had built their homes in a sturdier way? Why didn't the individual home owners have a storm shelter?
If this were something other than a quick natural disaster--for example, poor people dying of heat stroke due to extended weather of 100-plus degrees--I think we'd be quick to have the conservative "don't get on the government t*t because it is too hard to get off it" crowd in here pretty quickly. I will bet, my friend, that you'd be one of them.
Mr. Pitt was born in Shawnee and went to Kickapoo High School, in the buckle of the Bible Belt and Tornado Alley. He and his partner, Ms. Jolie, donated $500,000 to tornado aid after the Joplin, Missouri, incident last year. There are a lot of tornados, my friend--do they have to show up with a half-million-dollar check within a few days of each?
Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie, together, made $50 million last year. They gave one percent of their gross income just to the Joplin people. They handed over $5 million to charity in 2009 (those are the last figures I've found). That is, Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie tithe about 10% of their total income to charity through the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
How much of your income did you give to charity last year? Jeesus?
Brad Pitt et al. have helped reconstruction by creating an organization that cuts through the red tape of the federal government. The government is standing in the way of a fast recovery.
I am so sorry that you had to suffer ! SORRY AND BEST WISHES FOR THE FUTURE !
With all the tornado's this past week, There is going to
be a need for a lot of Construction Workers in the South ... I bet you
Obama will Take Credit for All the Jobs those Tornado's Created . With No mention of All those who were Killed or Injured .
Nahh, Obama won't take credit...he'll just send lots of federal dollars down there so the red states can rebuild and then vote to not pay back the tax revenue they took.
Just like Bush did after Katerina.
How many other countries are Sending Aid.
So Sad!!!!!!!!!!!!
So Sad!!!!!
So Sad!!!!!
Who was sorry for the American Indians when they were burnt, marched and murdered out who was sorry for them?
you made me laugh, thanks, your post is just so relevant to Hoosiers rendered homeless by wind funnels
Really?
Yes think about it who was sorry for the American Indians
Don't think of them as tornados. Think of them as God's taxicabs to heaven.
how many countries are coming to aid of Americans.....
Politics won't help them, but the love of people will. As it always does. Taxicab to heaven? How do you know they are going to heaven? The Bible says there are only 144,000 will go to heaven. The majority will live on earth. So if you died, you'll be resurrected. After all. most people want to see their loved ones again. Read the Bible, it is has a hope that has not become reality yet. The American Indians is a tragedy as well. God will bring all these atrocities into account.
I once went on a relief crew to a flood in Albany, Ga. It was small in comparison but when you see the destruction including seeing caskets flooded out of their vaults and all the mass destruction. It brings it to reality. And seeing people weeping over the lose of loved one and property. It was tough. But they did express their appreciation for us coming and helping. It's changed how I think and I feel the lose every time I hear of these things. Although, it's not my lose I can understand somewhat. All we can do is comfort them.
I love how neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers. It is truly heart warming. IT reminds me of Katrina and New Orleans, oh wait they didn't do that there did they?
This is how real Americans are supposed to act.
Hi Brian,
There was ALLOT of neighbor helping neighbor, stranger helping stranger after Katrina. It is well documented, if you would bother to look into it.
Why hasn't the president made a public message to the victims? If anything, to let them know that he is concerned about them and is responding to any state aid request.
It is so hard to see that as the most powerful nation on earth, a couple of twisters easily turned it into a third world country. We always attribute the deaths of citizens of other nations after a natural disaster to shoddy construction and political corruption, what will we say about ours? We immediately start creating all kinds of excuses, if not lies, to brush it off and do nothing about it. Followings are some common ones, "tornadoes are the most powerful force on earth, even greater than A-bomb", "no construction can resist a tornado", "tornadoes are sent by GOD", "only prayer can help when tornadoes strike", "our construction is solid", "we have good quality homes", "only underground shelter can escape a tornado", ... ...
While it's sad to see all the destruction, it's time for these people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps as real Americans always do with the help of friends and families. The government should not be involved with financing re-building from weather related catastrophes. That is why we have private insurance companies. If you choose to live in tornado alley, you should have the appropriate insurance.
Just say no to Big Government!
TeaPartyof1:
I hope you consider this: Sometimes a disaster overwhelms what can be brought to a disaster. Then extra resources can be transferred as needed. Henryville is a candidate for this.