Carolina, April 18: The death toll of tornadoes that hit large parts of central, southern and eastern United States has increased to at least 45 people, reports say.
Rescue operations are still ongoing in places where the storms have destroyed houses or cut trees. Hundreds of thousands of people are without electricity, The Associated Press reported.
Wild storms began in Oklahoma on Thursday and struck Kansas and Texas, eventually raking through Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia.
On Friday, some two dozen tornadoes were reported in Mississippi and Alabama, before moving to North Carolina in the east coast on Saturday.
North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue said on Sunday, “We’re beginning to recover from what we believe is the most widespread tornadoes we’ve seen since the mid-80s.”
“We believe that there are perhaps as many as 62 tornadoes that have touched down across the state in many of our counties, about 20 counties that are clearly identified,” she said, adding, “This evening I declared a state of emergency for North Carolina.
Storms kill an average 70 people in the US every year. The deadliest recorded tornadoes in America happened in 1974 when three-hundred people were killed.
——–Agencies