Arkansas Tornado Toll: at Least 24 Dead, 200 Injured

Nicholas Word was standing on his front porch when the tornado struck, smashing his tiny wood-frame house off its foundation and hurling him and the wreckage into his neighbor’s yard.

“When I woke up, there was just rubble--rubble and fog,” Word said Sunday amid the devastation of Saturday’s killer storms. “All I can tell you is, it’s the worst sound that you’d ever want to hear in your life. But I guess I cheated death.”

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The storms killed at least 24 people in Arkansas, ripping through Little Rock, Arkadelphia and smaller towns.

It seemed like “a year’s worth of tornadoes,” Gov. Mike Huckabee said Sunday.

There was a possibility the death toll could climb as rescue workers worked in Sunday’s driving rain to clear the wreckage, authorities said.

More than 200 people were injured and hundreds of homes, businesses and other structures were destroyed or damaged along a 260-mile path from Hempstead County in the southwest to Greene County in the state’s northeastern corner. At least 10,000 electricity customers had no power.

Huckabee said he would seek a federal disaster declaration covering at least 10 Arkansas counties. “The term I’m using to describe it is ‘apocalyptic proportions,’ ” the governor said after flying over the damage in Little Rock and Arkadelphia. “There is no way to describe the level of damage we have.”

President Clinton made the disaster declaration Sunday evening, and the White House announced that Clinton will head to his native state on Tuesday to inspect the storm damage.

“Hillary and I are deeply saddened by this tragic loss of life and property. The storm hit places and people we know well, and our hearts and prayers are with everyone who lost loved ones, homes and businesses,” Clinton said in a statement.

Emergency officials conducted a house-by-house search of Arkadelphia for the dead and injured while police evacuated part of the downtown area because of natural-gas leaks. Leaks were also reported in College Station.

Weather specialists had not yet determined if the area was hit by one tornado or several, said Renee Fair, warning-coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service office at North Little Rock.

The same huge system of thunderstorms was also blamed for up to 14 deaths in Mississippi, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio. Flooding forced scores of people from their homes in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

The hardest-hit area was the community of Sardis in Saline County, west of Little Rock, with 10 confirmed dead.

Rescue workers meticulously searched through the twisted debris of a demolished mobile home park in Sardis on Sunday.