Bush to visit southern states hit by deadly tornados

WASHINGTON, March 3, 2007 (AFP) - US President George W. Bush on Saturday will tour areas devastated by deadly tornadoes in the southern United States as the country reeled along with Canada from a storm system that killed at least 22 people.

Bush, who was sharply criticized for his administration's slow response to the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said he would visit Georgia and Alabama to offer his support.

"I go down knowing full well that I'll be seeing people whose lives were turned upside down by the tornadoes," he told reporters. "I'll do my very best to comfort them."

The president is making efforts to show responsiveness to public emergencies. On Thursday, he visited the Louisiana city of New Orleans, still ravaged by Katrina.

Federal disaster aid was extended Thursday to Alabama and Missouri, a Midwestern state also struck by the twisters.

The National Weather Service said Friday it had received reports of 31 tornadoes touching the ground around the region as US media showed images of roofless homes with blown-out windows, uprooted and shredded trees, dangling power lines and cars overturned and crushed.

The massive storm system was headed north where it was expected to turn from thunderstorms to blizzards and dump up to a foot (30 centimeters) of snow in the northeastern US, the service forecast.

Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) took withering criticism 18 months ago after Katrina's surging waters collapsed dikes and 1,500 persons died as rescuers and supplies arrived late or not at all.

Not this time, said a White House spokeswoman.

"They will be coordinating any requests for assistance," said spokeswoman Dana Perino. "And preliminary damage assessment teams are on the ground, working with state and local authorities to evaluate the destruction and they have liaisons in each of the states' emergency operation centers."

In the southern state of Alabama, 10 people were killed, including eight teenagers sheltering in a high school in the town of Enterprise when a tornado struck, the state emergency management office said.

Students had been told to huddle against the school's brick walls for hours before the twister barreled down Thursday. High school student Brooke Shroades survived the tornado by hunkering down in a cubbyhole.

"I felt like I was on a rollercoaster. It was the scariest thing ever," she told the Enteprise Ledger newspaper.

"When I heard the train sound, I started screaming," she said.

Her father, Mike Shroades, who had hoped to pick up his daughter before the storm hit, took shelter in a school hallway with other parents, teachers and students.

"You could feel your body moving from the wind and suction," he told the Enterprise Ledger.

Emergency services spokeswoman Yasamie Richardson said rescue workers were still searching for possible victims.

"They are still going through the debris just in case they missed anything," she said. The state has opened shelters for the hundreds of people rendered homeless by the storm.

In the pre-dawn hours of Friday a tornado triggered by the same storm hit the Murray Sumter Regional Hospital in the town of Americus, Georgia, destroying the ambulance fleet and forcing 55 patients to evacuate, CNN reported.

Two people not linked to the hospital were killed there.

At least seven other people were killed across southern Georgia, and one died in Missouri after an apparent tornado destroyed a mobile home.

Alabama Governor Bob Riley said the town of Enterprise, where the high school was destroyed, had suffered "major and widespread damage." He announced he was deploying about 100 National Guard soldiers to assist in recovery efforts.

"Everything I've seen today -- the damage is truly remarkable," he told reporters. "To sum it up, it is horrific. I truly am amazed that we didn't have more loss of life."

In Canada, a severe winter storm was blamed for the deaths of two children in a traffic accident in Toronto.