US President Joe Biden visited the wreckage of a major storm that hit Mississippi last week as much of the United States braced for more extreme weather, including tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.
Speaking from Rolling Fork’s hard-hit Mississippi community, Biden said Friday that for 30 days the federal government would cover the full cost of the state’s emergency response to the March 24 storm.
Twenty-five people were killed in Mississippi from the extreme weather, resulting in at least one tornado that swept across parts of the state. One person was killed in neighboring Alabama.
“Three minutes — in three minutes, this neighborhood was basically gone… Everything was gone,” Biden said in front of a destroyed building in Rolling Fork, a town of about 1,900 in western Mississippi that killed 13 people.
“Three hundred homes and businesses are just piles of twisted materials,” he said. “Mixed with personal items that mattered so much. Teddy bears, family albums, clothes, plates, basics of life are all gone.
Biden declared a state of emergency in Mississippi last Sunday and ordered federal aid to complement state, tribal and local recovery efforts in affected areas.
The aid could be used, among other things, to help residents rebuild their homes and access temporary housing, the White House said.
Rolling Fork Mayor Eldridge Walker said during Biden’s visit on Friday, “What is lost cannot be recovered.
“But we are confident that the people of Rolling Fork are resilient and we will make this community bigger and better.”
‘Significant damage’ in Arkansas
The promises to rebuild Mississippi came as meteorologists warned millions of people to brace themselves for massive storms to hit at least 15 states in the Midwestern and Southern US on Friday.
The weather threatened to produce tornadoes, blizzards and freezing rain across much of the country, including areas affected by last week’s storm.
More than 85 million people were under weather warnings on Friday as the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center predicted an unusually large outbreak of thunderstorms with the potential to bring hail, damaging wind gusts and strong tornadoes that can travel long distances over the ground .
According to media reports, a violent tornado swept through Little Rock, the state capital of Arkansas, ripping roofs and walls off many buildings, uprooting trees, overturning vehicles and injuring hundreds of people.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences has declared a mass casualty after a “catastrophic” tornado hit the city, a CBS affiliate reported Friday, adding that hundreds of people were injured.
Aerial photos posted by The Weather Channel showed a badly damaged area of Little Rock stretching over several blocks with numerous homes without roofs and walls, some collapsed, and overturned vehicles strewn all over the streets.
The National Weather Service also reported that tornado activity destroyed several homes and knocked down trees in and around Little Rock.
The city’s mayor, Frank Scott Jr., said he was in contact with Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders asking for help from the National Guard. “Again, please stay away from affected areas to allow emergency workers access,” he said wrote on Twitter.
Huckabee Sanders said the state suffered “significant damage,” without providing further information. “Arkansans need to stay on top of the weather as the storms continue,” she said tweeted.
The area at greatest risk for storms followed a large stretch of the Mississippi River from Wisconsin all the way to Mississippi, with rare high-risk warnings around Memphis; and between Davenport, Iowa, and Quincy, Illinois and surrounding areas.
Forecasters issued tornado warnings over both high-risk regions through Friday night, with the weather service expecting numerous tornadoes and calling it a “particularly dangerous situation.”
With the newly released Tornado Watch, now more than 28 million people in a Tornado Watch.
Find and track your local NWS office for the latest https://t.co/GWrG0hTRHN https://t.co/YkA9JobMwH pic.twitter.com/IL3iKjNTdo
— National Weather Service (@NWS) March 31, 2023
As of Friday afternoon, the National Weather Service had issued a tornado warning for eastern and central Iowa, northwestern Illinois, northeastern Missouri and the southwestern corner of Wisconsin.
It urged the five million people living in these areas to prepare for numerous strong tornadoes on Friday afternoon and evening.
The agency also warned that northeastern Arkansas, the southern shoe heel of Missouri, western Kentucky and western Tennessee were also at risk for tornadoes.