'We thought we were dead': Survivors describe horror as death toll rises to 32 after Midwest, South tornadoes
LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS: The death toll due to devastating tornadoes that ravaged the American South and Midwest reportedly rose to 32 on Sunday, April 2. There were over 50 tornado reports in at least seven states after the outbreak on Friday, March 31.
Deaths have been reported across several states, especially in Arkansas, Indiana, and Tennessee, where the statewide death toll rose to as many as 15. The threat shifted to the Southern Plains on Sunday, where nearly 13 million people in north Texas face an enhanced risk for severe weather, the Storm Prediction Center said, according to CNN.
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Houses were crushed, businesses destroyed and building roofs ripped off. Besides this, storms knocked out power with more than 25,000 customers in Arkansas impacted by outages on Sunday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.US. Thousands of other people across the South and Northeast were also left without power, including over 92,000 in Pennsylvania and more than 50,000 in Ohio.
'We made the kids get into the bathtub'
Janice Pieterick, along with her husband Donald Lepczyk, rushed to her daughter’s home across the yard when they got the alert of an incoming tornado. At the time, they were in their RV in Hohenwald, Tennessee, WTVF reported. When the tornado hit minutes later, the family found themselves huddled together in the bathroom. “We made her and the kids get into the bathtub because that’s supposed to be the safest place. And we just all hunkered down because all the doors blew out. Double doors in the front, double doors in the back, all the glass in the windows. It all blew out at once,” Pieterick said.
"You can literally feel it moving. Lifting up. That’s when we thought we were going, too,” she said, describing how the whole house shook.
'We thought we were dead'
Ashley Macmillan described how she and her husband, along with their children, also huddled inside a bathroom with their dogs. She said they were “praying and saying goodbye to each other, because we thought we were dead.” They remained unhurt, but a tree that fell due to the storm damaged their home. “We could feel the house shaking, we could hear loud noises, dishes rattling. And then it just got calm,” she said, according to Time.
Jeffrey Day, upon learning that their community of Adamsville was being hit was being struck by the tornadoes, called his daughter. She answered the phone, screaming, huddled with her two-year-old son inside a closet. “She kept asking me, ‘What do I do, daddy?’” Day said. “I didn’t know what to say.”
Masoud Shahed-Ghaznavi was having his lunch at home when the storm began wreaking havoc in his neighborhood. Sheetrock fell and broke his windows as he hid in the laundry room. “Everything around me is sky,” Shahed-Ghaznavi said. “When I closed my eyes, I couldn’t sleep, imagined I was here."
The storms reportedly also caused blizzard conditions in the Upper Midwest. Rescue operations were underway in several areas.