PICHER, Okla. -- Rescue crews and search dogs hunted for survivors or bodies Sunday in the piles of debris left by a tornado that rumbled through this former mining town a day earlier, killing at least seven people.
The same storm system killed at least 14 others in Missouri and one person in Georgia.
Officials held out hope that they wouldn't find any more bodies in Pitcher, once a bustling mining centre of 20,000 that has since dwindled to about 800 people over fears of lead pollution.
Residents said the tornado created a surreal scene as it moved through Picher late Saturday afternoon, injuring 150 people and overturning cars and throwing mattresses and twisted metal high into canopy of trees.
"I swear I could see cars floating," said Herman Hernandez, 68. "And there was a roar, louder and louder."
Ten of the dead in Missouri were killed when a twister struck near Seneca, Mo., about 30 kilometres southeast of Picher near the Oklahoma border, the state emergency management agency said.
Searchers were also out in the Seneca area on Sunday, combing farm fields looking for bodies and survivors.
"We are finding more (bodies) unfortunately," said Susie Stonner, an emergency management spokeswoman.
The number of injuries across the area was not immediately available. But Keith Stammer, who is acting as spokesman for Newton County emergency operations, said 19 storm victims were admitted to hospital. He did not know the extent of their injuries.
Jane Lant was sorting through the debris of her bridal shop about 15 kilometres north of Seneca. A body wrapped in blue tarp lay next to the shop. Her husband's feed store and a home across the road were also destroyed.
Lant said they were thankful that the store had closed an hour before the twister hit.
"We would have had people in here at 6 p.m. when it hit," she said.
On Sunday, storms rumbled across Georgia, killing at least one person in Dublin, about 200 kilometres southeast of Atlanta, authorities said. Weather officials had not yet confirmed whether the storms produced any tornadoes.
Georgia Power officials say at least 80,000 residents were without electricity across the state, mostly concentrated in the metro Atlanta area and the Macon area.
In Picher, some homes were reduced to their foundations, others lost several walls. In one home, the tornado knocked down a bedroom wall, but left clothes hanging neatly in a closet.
A Best Western hotel sign was blown several kilometres before coming to rest against a post. At one home, a basketball goal planted in concrete had its metal support twisted so the rim hung only about a metre above ground.
The towering piles of mining waste, or chat, had debris from the flattened homes scattered onto them by the storms. Cars were overturned and dogs roamed freely.
Frank Geasland, Ottawa County's emergency manager said, a government-sponsored buyout of homes in the town meant that some residences vacant, something that may have prevented a greater loss of life.
The tornado was the deadliest in Oklahoma since a May 3, 1999, twister that killed 44 people in the Oklahoma City area.
The U.S. National Weather Service estimated that at least eight tornadoes were spawned in Oklahoma along six storm tracks. Three teams were dispatched to assess damage, meteorologist Steve Amburn said.
Television footage showed some destroyed outbuildings and damaged homes west of McAlester and near Haywood, Okla.. At a glass plant southwest of McAlester, the storm apparently picked up a trailer and slammed it on top of garbage bins.
In storm-weary Arkansas, a tornado collapsed a home and a business, and there were reports of a few people trapped in buildings, said U.S. Weather Service meteorologist John Robinson.
Tornadoes killed 13 people in Arkansas on Feb. 5, and another seven were killed in an outbreak May 2. In between, the state suffered freezing weather, persistent rain and river flooding that damaged residences has slowed farmers in their planting.
--The Associated Press
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