YAZOO CITY, Miss. — Rescuers spread out Sunday to scour neighborhoods of splintered homes and twisted debris in Mississippi, a day after a devastating tornado sliced through the state and killed 10 people, including three children.
James Jackson, a deputy state fire marshal, said crews organized at first daylight to resume search and rescue operations. All was still Sunday morning as the sun rose amid one of the hardest hit areas of Yazoo City. National Guard soldiers blocked the roads, and the occasional emergency vehicle prowled amid the rubble.
The high winds on Saturday ripped roofs off buildings in hard-hit Yazoo County, where Gov. Haley Barbour grew up. He described "utter obliteration" among the picturesque hills rising from the flat Mississippi Delta.
"This tornado was enormous," Barbour told The Associated Press as searchers resumed their work.
Speaking in the parking lot of a heavily damaged restaurant, Barbour said emergency crews would be going to isolated houses in rural areas they had been unable to reach in the first chaotic hours after Saturday's storm.
Around him, he stood against a backdrop of snapped trees stretching to the horizon, houses wiped from their foundations and odd debris — including a child's stuff toy and a metal boat laying alongside a road.
He estimated at least 100 houses in Yazoo County alone had severe damage but said his estimate could rise later.
Meteorologists said it was too soon to tell whether a single long-lasting tornado — or multiple shorter ones — caused the arc of death and damage in far-flung Mississippi communities. The same storm front spawned heavy thunderstorms that raked across northern Alabama, Georgia and other states on Sunday, snapping trees, damaging rooftoops and scattering hail.
On Sunday, some recalled some terrifying moments.
Josiah Moton, 31, and his girlfriend Morgan Hayden, 27, were in their Yazoo County home when the sky darkened Saturday and Moton went out to try to move his vehicle to a safer spot. "The wind was coming so strong it tried to tote me away."
He ran back inside and they both huddled in a bathtub. The bathroom was the only room that wasn't destroyed and neither one was even cut. But now they are homeless after the rest of the house was turned to rubble around them.
"Someone else's kitchen sink is where our kitchen used to be," Hayden added.
Yazoo County's coroner, Ricky Shivers, was in his own truck when the winds flipped the vehicle four times. Shivers went to the hospital to have bruised ribs and cuts treated, then went out to help identify bodies in his hospital gown. He told the AP by phone Sunday morning that he did not know whether any more people had died because he was back in the hospital have his wounds tended to.
Many other residents told stories of unlikely survival amid the destruction.
"The roof was caving in, TVs flying off the shelves and it was horrible," said Mitchell Saxton, the owner of Ribeye's Steak House in Yazoo City.
Those with him in the restaurant ran into a walk-in freezer to safety when they saw the tornado. Saxton's restaurant was destroyed but no one was hurt there.
"We got in the walk-in freezer, sat in there for about 10 minutes," Saxton said. "When I came out it was really bad. Just thanking the good Lord I'm here and able to talk with you all."
Tornadoes were also reported in Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama, and the severe weather continued to track northeastward early Sunday as gusty winds also downed trees crossing northwest Georgia.
In Yazoo City, Malcolm Gordon, 63, stood with family members peering out at the neighborhood through a broken window.
Above them, the roof was gone, a tree lay across part of the house and power lines stretched across the yard. The smell of shredded pine trees hung in the warm breeze amid modest houses and mobile homes.
Gordon and his wife, Diane, hid in a closet while much of the neighborhood was blown away.
"I'll just bulldoze what's left and start over," he said.
Essie Hendrix, manager of Peebles department store in Yazoo City, said she and other employees were inside with about 15 customers when the tornado struck. An assistant manager took the customers to the back of the store, and Hendrix saw the tornado barreling through the parking lot.
"It was like a rumbling and a roaring and stuff was falling," Hendrix said. "It sounded like it was going to suck us out of there. It lasted about two minutes, but it felt like it lasted an hour."
No one in the store was injured, about 100 yards away from the steakhouse that was destroyed.
The severe weather began in Louisiana, just across the state line from Mississippi when a tornado destroyed 12 homes and warehouses at Complex Chemical Co., which makes antifreeze and other automotive fluids, owner Jerry Melton said.
The storm system moved east, with the twister hitting nearby Yazoo County, Miss., killing four people. In adjacent Holmes County, another person was killed. A little farther northeast, a tornado hit Choctaw County, where another five victims were reported, including children ages 3 months, 9 and 14.
Three broken crosses stood near a flattened church. A nearby funeral home was reduced to rubble. In a patch of woods, pieces of tin were twisted high up in the broken trees.
Thousands across the state were without electricity, and downed power lines and trees blocked roads. At least four people had been brought by four-wheeler to a triage center at an old discount store parking lot, Yazoo City Mayor McArthur Straughter said as sirens whined in the background.
Jim Pollard, a spokesman for American Medical Response ambulance service, said four patients from Yazoo County were airlifted and some 20 others were taken to hospitals. At least four people were in critical condition.
Associated Press writers Jack Elliott Jr. in Jackson, Maria Burnham in French Camp, Jackie Quinn in Washington, Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans and Jacob Jordan in Atlanta contributed to this report.