Jul 9, 2014

Deadly storms rip through eastern US

                               Four houses in Smithfield, New York, were completely destroyed

A wave of thunderstorms with powerful winds in northern New York have killed at least four and left more than 70,000 people without electricity.

Four residents of the rural town of Smithfield were found dead after several homes were destroyed by the fast-moving storms.

Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley told a local broadcaster investigators were searching for others in the rubble.

A boy at summer camp in Maryland was also killed when a tree fell.

Six of his friends were injured in the same accident, which happened as they were moving to shelter.

US forecasters said winds from the storms in New York state were at least 60mph (97km/h).

The National Weather Service said they were sending investigators to Smithfield to see if a tornado touched down.

                                          One house in Smithfield moved across the street
Town Supervisor Rich Bargabos told the Syracuse Post Standard a mother and her four-month-old baby, a relative of the family and an unrelated neighbour had been killed.

"The houses are obliterated," Mr Bargabos said. "There is not a piece of framework together."

He added one of the house was "picked up and moved probably 500 feet across the road into another house".

Three small tornadoes touched down in Ohio, forecasters said, and another was spotted in Pennsylvania.

At the height of the outages on Tuesday, more than 300,000 homes and businesses were without electricity in the north-west area of the state.

Source - BBC


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