Tornado in Arkansas killed 11 people

Emergency responders were counting fatalities and surveying damage Saturday morning after an overnight tornado was part of a major natural disaster. Fatalities were reported in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana and Arkansas. Many areas were without power and roads were littered with debris.

In Belvidere, Illinois, the roof of the Apollo Theater, where a rock concert was to be held, collapsed during a tornado. The incident left one person dead and 28 injured, five seriously. The fire department reported that 260 people were inside the venue. Firefighters also rescued a man from an elevator and had to deal with fallen power lines outside the theater.

Belvidere Police Chief Shane Woody described the scene after the collapse as “chaos, absolute chaos.”

Nearly 90,000 customers in Arkansas were left without power. Outages were also reported in Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Indiana and Texas.

The storm covered a vast area of the U.S. that is home to about 85 million people. Weather officials also recorded tornadoes in Iowa, wind-driven fires in Oklahoma, and blizzards in the northern Midwest.

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