Tornadoes kill 340 in southern America

THE death toll from the devastating tornadoes that hit America's south climbed yesterday to make them among the deadliest weather events in US history.

Alabama bore the bruntwith at least 246 deaths. Authorities raised the total number of confirmed dead in several states to 340 yesterday.

Hundreds if not thousands of people were injured on Wednesday - 990 in Tuscaloosa alone - and as many as one million Alabama homes and businesses remained without power last night.

The scale of the disaster astonished president Barack Obama when he arrived in the state on Friday.

"I've never seen devastation like this," he said, standing in bright sunshine amid the wreckage in Tuscaloosa, where at least 45 people were killed and entire neighbourhoods were flattened.

Hours later, Obama signed disaster declarations for Mississippi and Georgia, in addition to one he had authorised for Alabama.

Tuscaloosa's mayor, Walt Maddox, called the devastation "a humanitarian crisis" for his city of more than 83,000.

He said up to 446 people were unaccounted for in the city, though he added that many of those reports were probably from people who have since found their loved ones but have not notified authorities. Corpse-detecting dogs were deployed in the city yesterday but they had not found any remains, he added.

During the mayor's news conference, a man asked him for help getting into his home, and broke down as he told his story.

"You have the right to cry," Maddox told him. "And I can tell you, the people of Tuscaloosa are crying with you."

Tornadoes struck with unexpected speed in several states, and the difference between life and death was hard to fathom. Four people died in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, but a family survived being tossed across a road in their modular home, which was destroyed.

The largest death toll for a US tornado was on 18 March, 1925, when 747 people were killed in a line of storms that hit Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.