Awwal 26, 1432 / April 30, 2011, SPA -- The death toll from the second deadliest U.S. tornado outbreak on record rose above 350 on Saturday as thousands of stunned survivors camped out in the shattered shells of their homes or moved into shelters or with friends, according to Reuters. With some estimates putting the number of homes and buildings destroyed close to 10,000, state and federal authorities in the U.S. South were still coming to terms with the scale of the devastation from the country's worst natural catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One disaster risk modeler, EQECAT, is forecasting insured property losses of between $2 billion and $5 billion from the havoc inflicted by the swarm of violent twisters that gouged through seven southern states this week. The death toll in Alabama, the hardest-hit state, rose to 255 on Saturday, with at least 101 more deaths reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana. "We're in the thousands of homes completely gone ... It's not an exaggeration to say that whole communities were wiped out," Yasamie August, spokeswoman for the Alabama Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters. In many communities in the U.S. South, the scenes of destruction with tangled piles of rubble, timber, vehicles and personal possessions recalled the devastation seen in the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Power and water were still out in many areas. "It is like living in some other world. Devastation is everywhere," said Pastor John Gates of the United Methodist Church in Pleasant Grove, a community with a population of some 10,000 west of Birmingham, Alabama. The death toll from the week's tornado outbreak, which is still expected to rise, was the second highest inflicted by this kind of weather phenomenon in U.S. history. In March 1925, 747 people were killed after tornadoes hit the U.S. Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. President Obama, mindful of criticism that President George W. Bush was too slow to respond to the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, visited the wrecked city of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, on Friday to pledge full federal assistance for the states hit.
