3 Northeast States Clean Up After Tornadoes; Hikers Missing

Rescue teams searched for lost hikers in western Massachusetts on Tuesday as cleanup began here and in southeastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, where tornadoes struck Monday night.

A team of psychologists visited the Eagleton School in Great Barrington on Tuesday to counsel the 43 students there after two teen-agers and a staff member died when the twister picked up their car and threw it 600 feet.

“I don’t think the kids really grasp the magnitude,” said Paul Shafiroff, education director at the school for mentally retarded boys with emotional and behavioral problems. “It’s beyond their real understanding.”

Vinson Verble, 18, Christopher Bilodeux, 14, and Leslie Elson, 61, were returning from a shopping trip when the tornado hit. Its 200-m.p.h. winds hurled their car into a stand of trees. School counselor Seung (Sonny) Choi, who was driving, remained in critical condition Tuesday. He was thrown from the car.

“He said, ‘The children were belted in, but I don’t know where the car is,’ ” said School Director Bruce Bona, who found Choi dazed and walking along a highway looking for the car.

The tornado blew down power lines and snapped trees two feet thick. It injured 24 people and damaged more than 1,200 homes and 15 businesses.

Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Paul Cellucci toured the devastation Tuesday and promised state help. Damage was estimated in the millions of dollars. Cellucci and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) were pressing the federal government for cleanup funds, a state official said.

Rescue workers were searching for two or three hikers on the Appalachian Trail who did not check in at a hotel in Monterey as scheduled Monday night, said Ed McCormick at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. “We’re physically searching now every inch of the path that this tornado went through.”

The tornado ripped off part of the roof of the Timberlyn Heights nursing home in Great Barrington, forcing its 120 residents to evacuate, but none was injured.

In the Midwest, forecasts for clear skies should give relief workers needed time in their fight against high water on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers. But in Tennessee, two children drowned while swimming in a flooded backwater area, and a third youngster was missing.

Hundreds of convict laborers and others raced to reinforce levees with sandbags before the rain-swollen Illinois River crests, while Missouri released some National Guardsmen from flood duty.

President Clinton on Tuesday declared a major disaster in Illinois and ordered federal funds to supplement state and local recovery efforts in communities struck by the severe storms and flooding. The action makes federal funding available to affected individuals in Madison and St. Clair counties.