Tornado Hits Deep South

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 15

Tornado Hits Deep South

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) JACKSON

(Mississippi), March 4. Shrieking tornadoes smashed through Alabama and Mississippi at dusk today, killing at least 55 persons, injuring an estimated 400 others and making hundreds homeless as a result of devastation by wind and water.

The authorities expected the death toll to be higher in the Mississippi tornado, which first twisted to earth at a shopping centre, where it killed 17 persons before lifting and striking another community, where it wiped out a family of six. Other twisters struck in Alabama —at Aliceville and Tuscaloosa, and a sudden sin rain sent nearly 250 persons fleeing from flash floods at

Columbus, Georgia, on the Alabama border. The Mississippi twister killed the Rev. and Mrs Marvin Pruitt, their three children and Mrs Pruitt's mother when it destroyed their home at Leesburg. Under Debris The Highway Patrol confirmed 43 deaths, but the patrol chief said that he assumed at least 50 persons had been killed in Jackson and the outlying rural areas. “There could be people under the debris,” he said. “There could be people under cars out on the roads, fishermen on lakes in the vicinity. “There’s just no way of knowing,” he added. The tornado first struck Raymond, and then hit southwest Jackson, devastating the Candlestick Park shopping centre killing at least 17 people and turning the fashionable area into a shambles of broken bricks and twisted steel.

It struck at 4.45 p.m., then began to weave a trail of death through central Mississippi.

At 9 p m. the Jackson Weather Bureau issued a special forecast stating the threat of tornadoes and severe thunderstorms appeared to be finished for the night.

» Not since 1953, when at least 35 persons were killed ■ in Vicksburg, had a tornado i taken so many lives, injured i so many people, and left such i devastation. The tornadic winds covered an area of roughly 65 square miles around Jackson, the State capital of Mississippi. A local newspaper editor ’ said: “I’ve been in Korea and the shopping centre looked ! as if it had been hit by a bomb. “There was only one build- ’ ing left that even looked like ■ a building. I saw at least 25 ’ to 30 cars twisted and their • windshields shattered.” Looting Alleged There were reports of looting in some of the devastated . sections of Jackson, the Asso- “ ciated Press reported. , “We’ve had to block off I many sections in an attempt j to prevent more looting,” a . policeman said. 3 Mr R. Crawford, the owner i of a service station in the

shopping centre said: "Everything, everybody, was picked up by that wind." He said minutes later three little girls ran by, screaming, “Daddy’s in there, daddy’s in there,” as they pointed back at a pile of rubble. At Flowood, Mississippi, the winds tossed cars into the air like toys in a whirlwind. A Jackson resident, Mr Jim Ward, said: “I was riding up the road when the tornado ripped down. My car soared through the air—l don’t know how high, and it landed on its top in a nearby yard. “The only thing that saved me was the seat belt.”