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Friday, March 2, 2012

2,100 prisoners escape as tornado destroy Alabama Department of Corrections

 

10 miles from Huntsville, approximately 2,100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure.

ATHENS, Ala. • Powerful storms stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes wrecked two small Indiana towns, killed at least three people and bred anxiety across a wide swath of the country in the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

Authorities reported the three deaths in southern Indiana, where Marysville was leveled and nearby Henryville also suffered extreme damage. Each is home to about 2,000 people.

"Marysville is completely gone," said Clark County Sheriff’s Department Maj. Chuck Adams.
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Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed numerous wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video shot by WLKY in Louisville, Ky., also shows tractor-trailers tossed on their side at a truck stop.

An Associated Press photographer in Henryville said the high school was destroyed and the second floor had been ripped off the middle school next door. Firefighters were searching through the ground floor of the middle school for possible victims.

The rural town about 45 miles north of Louisville is the home of Indiana’s oldest state forest and the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder Col. Harlan Sanders.

The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma said the massive band of storms was putting 10 million people in several states at high risk of severe weather.

"Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center," forecaster Corey Mead said. "This is one of those days."

Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed briefly because of debris on the runways. By late afternoon, one of three runways had reopened.
The outbreak was also causing problems in states to south, including Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were damaged. It comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.

At least 20 homes were badly damaged and six people were hospitalized in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area. To the east in Cleveland, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither was hurt.

"It just hit all at once," said Blaine Lawson, 76. "Didn’t have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us."

Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution, and several Kentucky universities were closed. The Huntsville, Ala., mayor said students in area schools sheltered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning.

"Most of the children were in schools so they were in the hallways so it worked out very well," said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.

Five people were taken to area hospitals, and several houses were leveled.

An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, but none of the facility’s approximately 2,100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure.
"It was reported you could see the sky through the roof of one of them," Corbett said.

For residents and emergency officials across the state, tornado precautions and cleanup are part of a sadly familiar routine. A tornado outbreak last April killed about 250 people around the state, with the worst damage in Tuscaloosa to the south.

The Storm Prediction Center’s Mead said a powerful storm system was interacting with humid, unstable air that was streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico.

"The environment just becomes more unstable and provides the fuel for the thunderstorms," Mead said.

Schools sent students home early or cancelled classes entirely in states including Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana. In Alabama alone, more than 20 school systems dismissed classes early Friday. The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and several other colleges in the state also canceled classes.

At least 10 homes were damaged in one subdivision in Athens, Ala. It wasn’t immediately clear how many houses were damaged overall in the area. Homeowner Bill Adams watched as two men ripped shingles off the roof of a house he rents out, and he fretted about predictions that more storms would pass through.

"Hopefully they can at least get a tarp on it before it starts again," he said.

Not far away, the damage was much worse for retired high school band director Stanley Nelson. Winds peeled off his garage door and about a third of his roof, making rafters and boxes in his attic visible from the street.


Real Shocking Crimes caught on camera: "Warning Graphic."
What your mainstream media never tell you: 
Marvel at the al-Jazeera film crew whipping the crowd to hysteria. This is what most UK/american mainstream media do ; get the crowds TO ACT for the cameras. Ever noticed the STAGED gun shots or in-the-lens chanting? It's all fake, staged propaganda for the liars at Sky/ITN/BBC?CNN/Fox. اسامہ بن لادن ہلاکओसामा बिन लादेन को मार डाला قتل أسامة بن لادن Oussama Ben Laden tué Osama Bin Laden getötet Usama bin Ladin dödas DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve. Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.  The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic. Subscribe to VesInteL World News by Email