Tornadoes killed four teenagers at a Boy Scout camp in Iowa and two people in Kansas as more than 30 twisters ripped through the US Midwest, authorities said on Thursday. Close to 100 Boy Scouts scrambled for safety in shelters and bunkhouses at the heavily wooded Little Sioux Scout Ranch in western Iowa when the tornado hit at around dinner time on Wednesday, authorities said.
"It was complete chaos. It was the worst thing I've ever seen. It was injured scouts and dead people," Thomas White, a scout leader, said on the CBS "Early Show." The four boys killed at the camp were identified as two 13-year-olds and one 14-year-old from nearby Omaha, Nebraska, along with a 13-year-old from Eagle Grove, Iowa.
"It was certainly a blow right to the gut," said Iowa Gov. Chet Culver. Officials said 94 campers and 24 adults were at the camp for a "Pohuk Pride" weeklong training event.
Boy Scout leader Lloyd Roitstein said the shelters were not built to withstand tornado-force winds. He said the campers knew foul weather was on the way and tried to prepare.
At least two tornado warnings were issued for Little Sioux before the twister struck. Forty-eight people from the camp were injured, including many who remained hospitalised on Thursday, officials said.
Rescue efforts were hampered by downed trees, lightning strikes and heavy rain. Many of the Boy Scouts, who had emergency training only a day before, quickly began helping one another. "There were some real heroes," Culver said. One of the scouts, Ben Karschner, said the tornado was "like a pounding sensation on your back." "It wasn't like blowing around," he told CNN. "It was just going straight on, not stopping."
One cabin where scouts sought shelter was in the path of the tornado, according to several witness accounts. "The one that did get destroyed is where all the fatalities were," said White. "It hit and all the doors flew open and it popped my ears," said Rob Logsdon, 15, who told reporters he saw "a real small kid under a bunch of bricks" who was not moving. "The walls and the porch and the roof just disappeared. I got hit by a table in the back."
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, who toured the site on Thursday, described the scene as one of utter devastation. "You see that bunkhouse and in some ways it is amazing we didn't lose more lives than we did," he said. Iowa was one of several Midwestern states hit by tornadoes overnight, some accompanied by baseball-sized hail. The storms compounded the damage from rampant flooding that has forced hundreds of people from their homes in the Midwest.
In Kansas, twisters killed one woman, who was found in a yard outside a home in Chapman, and a man, whose body was found outside a mobile home in Soldier in the north-east part of the state, said state emergency management operations spokeswoman Sharon Watson. Dozens of people were injured and at least 60 homes were destroyed by the Kansas tornadoes, Watson said. Several buildings at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, were damaged in the storm, according to authorities. More than 30 tornadoes were reported Wednesday across Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota.
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