Officials in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Kentucky begin an intense search-and-rescue effort and massive cleanup in the wake of the violent weather. The death toll is expected to rise.
"It was just the force of the storm," the governor told reporters. "It's hard to move that many people."
Officials estimate the intensity of the storm at F4 or F5, meaning winds in excess of 150 mph.. Whole neighborhoods were flattened.
One of the hardest-hit areas was Tuscaloosa, a city of more than 83,000 and home to the University of Alabama. The city's police and other emergency services were devastated, Mayor Walter Maddox said. At least 36 people were reported dead and more than 600 injured.
"I don't know how anyone survived," Maddox told reporters. 'We're used to tornadoes here in Tuscaloosa. It's part of growing up. But when you look at this path of destruction that's likely 5 to 7 miles long in an area a half-mile wide to a mile wide, I don't know how anyone survived. It's an amazing scene. There's are parts of this city I don't recognize, and that's someone that's lived here his entire life."
At a news conference at Tuscaloosa City Hall, Maddox, who had just toured his city by air, said some neighborhoods had been "removed from the map." The devastation crossed the city's economic lines, from middle-class housing for University of Alabama students and employees to one of the city's oldest public-housing complexes.
Officials were in an "urgent" phase of search and rescue, digging for bodies and trying to account for everyone. But the task was made more difficult because a key city building that housed the emergency management agency had been destroyed. So had most of the city's trash-pickup fleet. Two major water tanks were empty, Maddox said, and the city was facing potential shortages. He urged conservation.
"This is going to be a very long process," he said. "The amount of damage that is seen is beyond a nightmare. ... This will not be an easy journey. We ask for patience and we ask for prayers."
One of the hardest-hit neighborhoods was Cedar Crest, a collection of modest single-family houses near the university, home to many campus workers, professors and students and surrounded by strip malls, stores and fast-food restaurants. On Thursday morning, much of it was closed to cars, but throngs of people walked the streets — rescue personnel, gawkers, college students in running shoes and fraternity and sorority T-shirts.
The devastation was unavoidable and widespread. Trees were uprooted and broken on the ground, a gasoline station twisted into an accidental version of a Gehry building made of sheet metal, the drug store gutted and a mattress store turned into a hulking, filthy ruin. Block after block of homes were turned into skeletons with nothing but walls as silent sentries. On one street, a group of young people marveled at a large boxy appliance — it wasn't quite clear what kind — suspended about 20 feet up in a tree. A Winnie the Pooh crib bumper hung from another tree, like a sad banner from an awful party.
Cars had been thrown around, their windows bashed in, their metal battered and caked with mud. A newish Chevy Avalanche pickup was clogged with chewed chunks of fiberboard, its "door ajar" signal bonging nonstop.
"Dad, we're at ground zero here, and it's awful," a young man said, speaking into his cellphone. "It's really sad."
Kirk Miller, 36, and his wife, Rachelle, 44, were standing outside of the custom four-bedroom home they built four years ago. One side of it had been caved in from the top, with much of the roof falling on their ski boat and Kirk's motorcycle.
They felt, though, that they had escaped the worst: Kirk had been traveling on business Wednesday night, and Rachelle and their 3-year-old son, Wyatt, were alone when the tornado came. When she knew it was coming, she put Wyatt on his stomach in a windowless bathroom and covered him with her body. They made it. Their dogs made it.
When they walked outside, Rachelle said, she couldn't believe what she saw. Wyatt said, "Mommy, our house is broken."
Kirk said he grew up in Alabama and that tornadoes were not an abstraction to him. He said that when he heard there had been some damage, he figured he'd see the usual -- shingles strewn around, a few trees down.
But this time, he said, "I just couldn't believe it. All the trees were down. It's just all gone. It ain't Tuscaloosa anymore."
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