Storms in U.S. Kill 300 and Damages Nuclear Plant

The death toll soared to near 300 Thursday as rescuers dug through rubble from Mississippi to Virginia in the nation’s deadliest natural disaster since Hurricane Katrina. The reports were released to the Los Angeles Times, as government rescue workers take stock of the situation in the South.

It was what they call a tornado outbreak, something rarely seen on such a scale. Not since April 3, 1974, has the United States witnessed so much destruction from twisters.

Tornado experts say Wednesday, April 27, 2011, may go down in history as the most destructive outbreak in eight decades.

Alabama took the most brutal pounding, the entire state scarred by a monster funnel cloud that crossed the state on a track that struck Tuscaloosa head-on and chewed through the Birmingham suburbs before exiting into Georgia. At least 204 Alabamans lost their lives.

President Obama, who called the damage “nothing short of catastrophic,” will tour the devastated region Friday before going to Florida for the space shuttle launch.

The much of the state of Alabama is without power, and emergency responders are operating on natural gas generators.

Local TV stations in Alabama captured stunning footage of the squat, black maelstrom as it chewed a path through Tuscaloosa shortly before dusk Wednesday, riding along an interstate highway and coming within a mile of the football stadium that is home to the fabled Crimson Tide.

The university in Alabama has closed, canceling final exams and postponing graduation exercises until August. Power outages shut down most forms of communication, but students found they could still track the news through Twitter.

As with any tornado, the destruction could seem capricious, with obliterated areas bracketed by neighborhoods that were merely a little windblown.

Alabama’s Emergency Management Agency said 31 of the state’s 67 counties have reported damage. Most are in the central and northern parts of the state.

The storms shut down the three nuclear reactors in Alabama, the plants are of similar design to the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan.

However, unlike Fukushima Daiichi, when the one of the plants lost primary power, the plant’s diesel generators kicked in as designed to keep the reactors said representative for the Tennessee Valley Authority, which operates the facilities. “The plant is shut down safely,” she said, meaning that control rods dropped into the reactors when power went offline, stopping nuclear fission.

(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)

Park Sae-jin swatchsjp@ajunews.com