4 Die, 50 Hurt in Tennessee as Storm System Rolls East

The same massive low-pressure system that spawned tornadoes over Oklahoma and Kansas earlier this week brought storms to Tennessee late Wednesday and early Thursday, killing four people and injuring more than 50, officials said.

Among the dead was a 14-year-old girl killed while taking shelter in the basement of her home when the structure collapsed on her in Perry County, southwest of Nashville.

Her body was found after a four-hour search.

A man and a woman were also killed in a house demolished by winds in the same county. The fourth known fatality was that of a man who drove his car into a fallen tree in Madison County.

Cecil Whaley, a spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, said two elderly women were pulled from the wreckage of their home in Hickman County, also southwest of Nashville, and were taken to a hospital in critical condition.

More than 50 injuries were reported across the state, most of them not life-threatening, he said.

The storms first swept across the Mississippi River Valley into Memphis, Tenn., where a number of tornadoes were sighted. Lightning struck a trolley car on Main Street, slightly injuring the driver.

Over the next few hours, the storms swept eastward across Tennessee, causing damage in about 30 counties. Whaley said there was widespread tornado-like damage but most of the destruction was caused by straight-line winds, some of which were clocked at 90 mph.

While the storms had yet to be confirmed as tornadoes, the federal government’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., preliminarily listed the three deaths in the Linden vicinity as having been due to a tornado. It said said they brought to 83 the number of tornado fatalities in the United States so far in 1999.

In Nashville, the storms toppled trees and ripped branches from others, knocking out power to at least 20,000 homes. Power was restored at midday Thursday to many homes, but city schools were closed.

Whaley said Nashville’s airport sustained from $15 million to $20 million in damage. From 50 to 70 private planes were damaged and six or seven commercial jets sustained minor damage, he said.

The airport was closed during the worst of the storm, and some passengers were stranded for the night.