No deaths were reported in Nashville, but four people, including a little boy and his sister, were killed before dawn by tornadoes in rural parts of Arkansas and Tennessee. One person was killed when a twister touched down in the evening in Tennesee near the Alabama border.
"People heard it but couldn't see it," Manila, Ark., firefighter Michael White said of the early-morning twister that was cloaked by darkness and sheets of rain. "It passed probably 400 yards from my house. There was so much lightning and rain I didn't see anything."
A cold front that stretched from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi Valley was responsible for yesterday's severe weather across much of the South and Midwest.
The earlier storm hit Manila, in northeastern Arkansas about 230 miles west of Nashville, about 3 a.m., killing Casey Lomax, 2 1/2, and Brittni Lomax, 5. Their parents were injured.
An hour later, a tornado spawned by the same storm killed Paul and Peggy Kolwyck in Roellen, Tenn., about 50 miles east of Manila. Their bodies were found 200 to 250 feet from their trailer home, which was torn apart.
One person died when a tornado hit Wayne County on the Alabama border at about 6 p.m. No other details were immediately available.
Yesterday afternoon two tornadoes struck Nashville. About 100 people were injured, police and emergency management officials said. A man who was hit by a falling tree in Centennial Park was seriously hurt.
04-17-98
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