WASHINGTON: The number of deaths from devastating tornadoes in Tennessee has risen to 25.
Gov. Bill Lee announced the increase at a news conference Tuesday afternoon where he was accompanied by Nashville Mayor John Cooper.
Tornadoes ripped across Tennessee as people slept early Tuesday, shredding at least 140 buildings and killing at least 25 people. Authorities described painstaking efforts to find survivors in piles of rubble and wrecked basements as the death toll climbed.
One twister caused severe damage across a 10-mile (16 kilometer) stretch of downtown Nashville, wrecking businesses and homes and destroying the tower and stained glass of a historic church. Another erased homes from their foundations along a two-mile (3.2-kilometer) path in Putnam County.
Daybreak revealed a landscape littered with blown-down walls and roofs, snapped power lines and huge broken trees, leaving city streets in gridlock. Schools, courts, transit lines, an airport and the state Capitol were closed, and some damaged polling stations had to be moved only hours before Super Tuesday voting began.
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