[DIPECHO Network] 4-Dead , 40 Injured As Tornado Hits Boy Scout Camp

[Ashutosh Mohanty]

*4-Dead ,40 Injured As Tornado Hits Boy Scout Camp*

* *

BLENCOE, Iowa - A tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in the remote hills
of western Iowa on Wednesday, killing at least four people and injuring 40,
and setting off a frantic search to reach others in the piles of debris and
downed trees. Thomas White, a scout supervisor, said he dug through the
wreckage of a collapsed fireplace to reach victims in a building where many
scouts sought shelter." A bunch of us got together and started undoing the
rubble from the fireplace and stuff and waiting for the first responders,"
White told KMTV in Omaha, Neb. "They were under the tables and stuff and on
their knees, but they had no chance."

A search and rescue team deployed after the 6:35 p.m. twister had to cut
their way through branches during a lightning storm to reach the camp where
the 93 boys, ages 13 to 18, and 25 staff members were attending a weeklong
leadership training camp. "All of the buildings are gone; most of the tents
are gone; most of the trees are destroyed," Lloyd Roitstein, president of
the Boy Scouts of Mid-America Council, told CNN. "You've got 1,800 acres of
property that are destroyed right now."

Taylor Willoughby, 13, of Bellevue, Neb., said several scouts were getting
ready to watch a movie when someone screamed that there was a tornado.
Everyone in the building hunkered down, he said, but windows were breaking.
He said he saw another scout with his head split open." It was a pretty
gruesome image," Taylor said. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said three people were
unaccounted for, but a spokesman for the rescuers, Russ Lawrenson, said all
the victims had been found. The weather service had issued two warnings
minutes before the tornado hit, Culver said, but it wasn't clear whether the
camp had sirens."Based on what we were seeing on radar it looked like it
could have been a very powerful tornado," said Daniel Nietfeld with
the National
Weather Service.

At least 40 people who were injured in the storm were being taken to area
hospitals, said Iowa Homeland Security spokeswoman Julie Tack.Lawrenson, of
the Mondamin Fire Department, initially said most of the kids who were hurt
had been hiking when the tornado hit, but later said he could no longer
confirm the victims' whereabouts.The ranch about 40 miles north of Omaha,
Neb., includes hiking trails through narrow valleys and over steep hills, a
15-acre lake and a rifle range.

The camp was being secured by the National Guard and police.Gayle Jessen of
Fremont, Neb., said her 19-year-old son Zach is a staff leader at the camp.
He called his parents to say he had a bruise on an arm and was being treated
at a hospital."I'm so relieved my son is OK," Jessen said. She said her
husband was headed to the hospital to pick up their son.Lawrenson said
parents will be reunited with their children at a community center in nearby
Little Sioux. David Hunt, chairman of the Mid-America Boy Scout Council's
Goldenrod District, which covers several eastern Nebraska counties, said he
believed the boys were from eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

The tornado touched down as Iowa's eastern half grappled with flooding in
several of its major cities. The storm threatened to stretch Iowa's
emergency response teams even further. Tack said officials were confident
that the state's emergency response teams could handle the crisis because
western Iowa had been largely unaffected by the recent flooding. Tornadoes
also touched down in central Kansas, southern Minnesota and eastern
Nebraska. A line of tornadoes has caused widespread damage across central
Kansas. A tornado caused significant damage in Manhattan and Kansas State
University, tossing cars and destroying several businesses.

At least one person was injured in Chapman, where part of the roof of the
high school gymnasium was torn off, emergency officials said. A tornado
ripped a house from its foundation, leaving a bathtub protruding from a back
wall near Fulda, Minn., 140 miles southwest of Minneapolis. A woman inside
at the time suffered a knee injury. Another struck a farm near Springfield,
Minn., causing extensive damage to outbuildings, but no injuries to people
or livestock. There were no immediate reports of damage from the Nebraska
twisters, though a lightning strike knocked out radar at the National
Weather Service's office in Valley, about 30 miles northwest of Omaha.

>From Wisconsin to Missouri, officials in the storm-ravaged Midwest on
Wednesday were fortifying levees with sandbags, watching weakened dams and
rescuing residents from rising water. But Iowa was bearing the brunt of it.
Inmates in black-and-white striped uniforms were rescued from a jail by boat
as the raging Cedar River flooded Vinton and forced evacuations in Waterloo.
"Everything is flooded — everything is up to knee-high," said Patrice
Calhoun, of Waterloo, Iowa, who rolled up her pants and waded through water
to get home Wednesday morning. "You could actually swim in it."

Officials in Wisconsin were monitoring dams and high water in Indiana burst
a levee, flooding a vast stretch of farmland. In Minnesota and North Dakota,
strong winds closed a highway and even sent a cow into the air, a witness
said. Along the Mississippi River in Missouri and Illinois, the National
Weather Service was predicting the worst flooding in 15 years. Outlying
areas could be inundated, but most of the towns are protected by levees and
many low-lying property owners were bought out after massive flooding in
1993, officials said. In southeastern Illinois, floodwaters knocked out the
water supply to Lawrenceville, a city of 4,600, and to a nearby state prison
Wednesday morning. Officials said it remained unclear what made the city's
water main stop working and they would have to wait for floodwaters to
recede find the problem.

On the East Coast, officials revealed the weekend heat wave had claimed 17
lives. Most of the victims were elderly. Eight died in Philadelphia of
heat-related causes, six others in New York City, two in Maryland and one in
the Philadelphia suburb of Pottstown.

N.B: Associated Press writers Henry C. Jackson in Des Moines, Iowa, and Anna
Jo Bratton in Omaha, Neb., contributed to this report.





-- 
Ashutosh Mohanty, MSc, LLB, PhD contd.
DRM Specialist/Researcher
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