FEMA watched closely after deadly twisters

Impact could have been worse
As bad as the impact was, it could well have been much worse, said James Bassham, director of the Tennessee emergency agency, who said the biggest risk during a tornado is to large groups of people trapped inside structures.

Although it is the height of high school basketball season in Tennessee, Bassham noted that there were few games Tuesday evening.

“We could have had games last night, with 400, 500, 600 people in there when tornadoes went through,” he said.

Gov. Phil Bredesen said the state was also fortunate that the tornadoes largely avoided densely populated areas. He said the death toll could have been much higher as he took a helicopter tour of Macon, Sumner and Trousdale counties to survey the damage Wednesday.

Electric infrastructure gutted
In Arkansas, where 13 people were killed, officials said it was impossible to calculate the damage, but they said it was severe.

Nearly 400 homes were heavily damaged or destroyed in the small town of Gassville alone, NBC’s Ron Blome reported. In Clinton, much of electricity infrastructure was destroyed, leaving 80 percent of the town’s residents without power for as long as the next week, the Arkansas Electric Cooperative said.

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe surveyed the damage by helicopter Wednesday in Atkins, about 60 miles northwest of Little Rock, and wondered at the sheer arbitrariness of the destruction.

“You can see a path of destruction, and just a few yards away it looks like it was untouched,” Beebe said. “They are arbitrary and random, and you just never know.”

In Clinton, where three people were reported killed, Chad Mason of the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office said the view heading into town was once blocked by a tree line, but now you could see clear across the valley.

Authorities evacuated Stone County Medical Center in Mountain View, Ark., after tornado damage rendered its emergency room useless, state emergency officials said. The hospital’s 17 patients were moved to other facilities, and its surgery unit was open Wednesday for emergency assessments and transfers.

Wind, rain as system moves east
Late Wednesday, the official number of dead stood at 31 in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama.

In many places, the storms struck as Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses were ending. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee paused in their victory speeches to remember the victims.

The system moved eastward to Alabama on Wednesday, bringing heavy rain and gusty wind and causing several injuries in counties northwest of Birmingham.

The National Weather Service posted tornado watches for parts of southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and western Georgia. Weather service experts also investigated damage in Indiana to see if it was caused by tornadoes.

Karins of NBC Weather Plus said conditions were not favorable for another large tornado outbreak, however. He said the main damage Wednesday would likely be from hail and wind, with only a few scattered tornadoes. 

An apparent tornado damaged eight homes in Walker County, Ala., and a pregnant woman suffered a broken arm when a trailer home was tossed by the wind, said Johnny Burnette, the county’s emergency management director.

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