Fears of further severe storms were widespread in the American Midwest yesterday after fierce tornadoes killed at least 45 people and left thousands homeless. The tornadoes with winds swirling at up to 200 miles an hour cut miles-wide swathes of destruction across parts of Oklahoma and Kansas.
President Clinton promised swift federal aid for the stricken areas. In a statement he said: "My heart goes out to the people of Oklahoma and Kansas who suffered through a night of terror and devastation . . . Our top priority is to make sure people are safe, that everyone is accounted for and that initial clean-up can begin."
The state medical examiner said 40 people were killed in Oklahoma alone in the storms. In Kansas five people were reported dead. Rescue workers searched through the wreckage of destroyed houses and trailer parks to see if there were more bodies.
TV news programmes showed dramatic pictures of tornadoes roaring across the flat Oklahoma countryside blacking out the sky and leaving flattened dwellings and fires in their wake. "We have whole communities that simply aren't there anymore," the Governor of Oklahoma, Mr Frank Keating, told NBC's Today show.
"It certainly looks like a huge battle has taken place. There are entire neighbourhoods to the south of me that are no longer there," Mr Keating said as he asked President Clinton to declare a federal state of emergency for Oklahoma.
Weather stations scrambled to get out tornado warnings as the "twisters" formed about 45 miles south-west of Oklahoma City. Thousands of people in their paths rushed to evacuate their homes and reach safety thus reducing the death toll.
As a succession of tornadoes passed over Oklahoma City they levelled an estimated 1,000 homes in the southern part of the state capital.
The neighbouring state of Kansas was also hit by another series of tornadoes.
Oklahoma is the most tornado-prone state in the US but experts said that these ones were possibly the most severe since 1985 when 90 people were killed in tornadoes which moved across Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, said that one of the tornadoes could have been a mile-wide. It may yet be classified as an F4 which is the second strongest and has winds circulating at 207 to 260 miles an hour.
President Clinton's action in declaring a major disaster in Oklahoma and Kansas makes federal funding available to individuals and local governments in an 11county area in the states, and includes disaster housing, grants and low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, officials said.
"Some of the most powerful tornadoes ever recorded tore through these states last night, killing dozens of people, levelling whole neighbourhoods and leaving more than a thousand people homeless," Mr Clinton said.