3 Die as Tornado Rips Resort Town in Massachusetts

A tornado flattened parts of this resort town Monday, killing three people when it picked up a car outside a special education school and threw it hundreds of feet into the woods.

Two students and a staffer at Eagleton School died when the car they were sitting in was thrown, said Bruce Bona, director of the school for the developmentally disabled.

The tornado leveled one neighborhood, ripped up trees and forced the evacuation of a nursing home. At least 12 people were injured.

“I saw a big white gray thing and it hit like an explosion,” said Charles Haddad, who was thrown 30 feet and briefly knocked unconscious when the tornado hit his four-story house. Haddad said his three-car garage was lifted and then smashed into the ground.

Eleven people were treated for injuries at Fairview Hospital. Most suffered broken bones or cuts caused by flying glass, hospital president Claire Bowen said. Another person was taken to a hospital in Pittsfield with a fractured neck and was reported in stable condition, she said.