Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen will request disaster assistance from the federal government following yesterday’s rash of tornadoes and storms that took at least 30 lives.
After flying over Macon, Sumner and Trousdale counties northeast of Nashville and touring hard-hit Lafayette on the ground, Bredesen says, as governor, he’s never seen a tornado where the combination of intensity and length of destruction was as large…
“That track had to be 25 miles long, it didn’t skip, like a lot of them do, where there’s a half a mile and then it skips upwards, it’s just 25 miles of a tornado sitting on the ground, in some places very wide. In some places the path was three, four hundred yards wide. All I can say is, I mean, Lord, I regret the loss of twelve lives and the injuries up there. If that had been in a more populous area of the state I don’t know what would have happened.”
Bredesen says he talked with both President George Bush and Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff, who assured him that federal aid would come quickly. Bredesen says the state may finish its request in the next day or so.
WEB EXTRA
As of Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said that:
*FEMA liaisons are operating in state centers in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi.
*The Federal Incident Response Support Team stationed in Atlanta had been deployed at midnight Tuesday night to Lafayette, Tenn.
*In Tennessee TEMA reported 26 fatalities, more than 100 injuries and damage and/or power outages in at least nine counties in West and Middle Tennessee.
FEMA said:
*A suburban Memphis shopping mall and the FedEx hanger at Memphis International Airport were damaged.
*Interstate 40 was closed for a time after 60 tractor-trailers were blown over.
*Damage at Union University in Jackson displaced 1,000 students.
*An explosion shut down a Columbia Gulf gas pipeline.
The Red Cross said it had deployed people to five states – Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Kentucky – in the wake of more than 60 tornadoes in the Southeast.
The organization said the first and second day response would be emergency shelter and feeding of those hit by the storms, with distribution of clean-up kits and supplies to follow.
The Red Cross website at http://www.redcross.org/ provides a way for displaced families to register as “safe and well” so that out-of-contact families can be reassured.
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