New round of storms batters Missouri; De Soto gym flattened

Associated Press Writer

DE SOTO, Mo. (AP) -- Students and their coaches, just back from a track meet, huddled in their school Tuesday night as a violent storm bore down on De Soto.

Their bus arrived just as the storm reached its peak. The coaches hurried the boys inside the De Soto Junior High building, where they sought refuge in the teacher's lounge beneath the gym.

Then, when water began pouring in, they moved to the middle of the building, getting away before the gym collapsed.

Travis Shores, 14, said they spent a chaotic hour of terror in the building as the storm battered the building.

"Chairs started flying, everything started shaking," he said. "It was really scary."

The storm was one of a series that moved across the state Tuesday, just two days after Sunday's tornadoes that killed 18 in Missouri. De Soto, in Jefferson County south of St. Louis, was one of the hardest-hit communities.

As day broke Wednesday, residents gawked at widespread damage in their community of 6,400. Thousands of trees were down, some of them uprooted. On Main Street, a tractor-trailer was tipped on its side.

At the high school football stadium, an electronic scoreboard was tossed from one end of the field to the other, smashing into the leg of a goal post. The nearby junior high was the most badly damaged.

Amazingly, there were few injuries.

The storm caused significant damage at the Villa nursing home, but none of the residents were injured.

David Tetrault, ambulance district director in nearby St. Francois County, said only one person in the region was hospitalized. He said three others were treated by paramedics for scrapes and bruises.

"It's a miracle, isn't it?" Tetrault said.

Heavy rains accompanying the storm caused flash flooding in some areas of De Soto. Firefighters and volunteers helped rescue an elderly woman whose car went off the road into a drainage ditch.

Gov. Bob Holden declared Jefferson County a disaster area, authorizing the National Guard to help, and asked for federal assistance. He was tour the damage in De Soto Wednesday.

President Bush on Tuesday had approved the governor's request for federal disaster status in the 39 counties that suffered damage in Sunday's wave of violent storms. But lawmakers on Wednesday pressed for another declaration to help the residents in eastern Missouri cope with flooding and damage from subsequent storms.

A tornado hit Jackson in southeast Missouri at 8:49 p.m. Tuesday and stayed on the ground through the city for about 10 minutes. The tornado destroyed the police and fire department buildings, flipped cars and downed trees and power lines in the city of about 12,000. Only minor injuries had been reported by Wednesday morning, officials with the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department said.

The National Weather Service issued tornado warnings for more than 30 Missouri counties on Tuesday. While the new round of storms didn't pack the punch of the ones that left hundreds of homes in ruin on Sunday, the winds still uprooted trees, knocked down power lines and left debris strewn in their wake.

The heaviest damage appeared to be in an area of eastern Missouri south of St. Louis.

Paul Mayer, chief of the De Soto Rural Fire District, said most of the damage in Jefferson County was probably from straight-line winds, but that a tornado touched down at one point, about 7:45 p.m. He said the storm started west of De Soto, cut a path of destruction through the city and went east for another four or five miles.

Mayer said quite a few buildings had light to heavy damage, with some of them listed as uninhabitable.

He said a large section of the southwest portion of the county was without electrical power early Wednesday.

Between 150 and 200 firefighters from 20 departments were helping out in and around De Soto, Parmley said. The hilly country was making it difficult for authorities to communicate by cell phone.

Chuck Hasty, assistant superintendent of the De Soto schools, surveyed the damage at the campus the high school and junior high share. Hasty said the junior high gym had been leveled and the high school gym roof was gone.

"It looks like it's been taken off," he said. "I don't know (where it is). There is some in the front parking lot; I stepped over it walking in. There is also some on the football field."

Several neighboring towns also had significant damage. In nearby Bonne Terre, high winds knocked over mobile homes. At Richwoods in Washington County, the storm knocked loose a propane tank that drifted aimlessly in a flooded area, causing concern that it would exploded. That forced evacuation of several residents, who spent the night in a church.

In Franklin County, Interstate 44 near St. Clair was closed temporarily when a creek flooded both lanes of the highway. Much of Washington County was without power Tuesday night. Authorities suspected a transformer blew in Potosi.