Five killed in St. Louis tornado before storm blows east with more carnage

Yahoo

18-05-2025

The call came late Friday to the Rev. Derrick Perkins: Three people were trapped in the Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis after a tornado had toppled part of its steeple, leaving it in dusty piles of bricks and stones.
A signal from one person's cellphone helped Perkins and emergency workers find those trapped inside. But one of the people, a beloved longtime ministry leader, was killed, Perkins said.
'I was in disbelief -- heartbroken,' he said, holding back tears. 'Not only for the church but for the entire community.'
The grief and damage there is just a fraction of the devastation from the several tornadoes that have torn across the nation since late Friday, killing at least 23 people in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia and injuring dozens more. Officials warned the death toll could rise as they assessed the damage Saturday.
'I would describe this as one of the worst storms' in the city's history, said Mayor Cara Spencer of St. Louis at a Saturday news conference. 'The devastation is truly heartbreaking.'
The National Weather Service Office in St. Louis will continue to survey the damage before making a final determination, but a statement issued Saturday stated the tornado was 'at least' an EF-3, with winds topping 165 mph.
The metro-east escaped the worst of it, though hail and high winds damaged homes and vehicles in Granite City, Collinsville and Fairmont City. Multiple metro-east fire departments, including Belleville, have assisted in search and recovery in the ravaged St. Louis neighborhoods, according to press releases.
A tornado also reportedly touched down in Williamson County near Marion in southern Illinois. No injuries have been reported.
The spring tornado season has been especially brutal in this part of the country, coming just weeks after similar storms caused deadly destruction in the region. On Friday, these tornadoes were caused by a major storm over the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic.
By Saturday morning, government forecasters said they had confirmed 26 tornadoes in a preliminary count, with most of those occurring in Indiana and Kentucky. While that number so far is not the most recorded in a single day this year -- there were 107 during a tornado outbreak April 2 -- states like Kentucky and Missouri were still recuperating from the damage from other storms this year.
In Kentucky, at least 14 people were killed this week, Gov. Andy Beshear said Saturday morning. The governor is expected to tour the damage in Laurel County, about 90 miles south of Lexington, later Saturday. The sheriff's department there sent staff to the Faith Assembly Church in London, Kentucky, to help people trying to locate a loved one.
This week's storm also comes at a precarious moment for disaster relief efforts, as sweeping staffing and funding cuts have upended the usual processes for getting assistance from the federal government.
Officials in Kentucky and Missouri confirmed that they had been in touch with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
'There's no daylight between the delegation, the federal delegation or the mayor or the governor in that effort' to get assistance, said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., on Saturday morning.
The tornadoes killed at least seven people in Missouri, with five of them in St. Louis. Two people were killed in Scott County, in southeastern Missouri, according to the county sheriff's office.
In St. Louis, cellphone towers were damaged and traffic lights were down, city authorities said, and there was severe damage to homes and buildings. Spencer said early estimates showed that about 5,000 buildings had sustained damage.
Holly Lammert, who lives near the destroyed church where three people were trapped, was among the residents surveying the impact Saturday morning. Pieces of her neighbor's roof were in her backyard. There were dozens of jagged tree limbs and trunks in her community garden.
'This poor neighborhood,' she said. 'I don't know how we will come back.'
As sirens rang out Friday in nearby Forest Park, a nearly 1,300-acre public park that houses several of the city's cultural sites, workers quickly hustled visitors off the grounds and the handball court into a basement until the wind died down. By Saturday morning, light fixtures were shattered, structures had splintered into pieces, and some entrances to the park were blocked by fallen trees.
Steve Burkhardt, the facilities and security manager for Forest Park Forever, which works with the city to protect the urban park, said, 'It's a whole different experience to see how beautiful the park is before and how it looks now.'