Tornado Strikes Jonesboro, Ark., Causing Injuries, Official Says

Tornado Strikes Jonesboro, Ark., Causing Injuries, Official Says
NewsColony

A tornado struck Jonesboro, Ark., on Saturday evening, injuring some people and damaging a mall, local business and an airport, according to the authorities.

Sally Smith, a spokeswoman for the Jonesboro Police Department, said she was not sure how many people had been injured or how seriously.

She said the tornado had cut a swath from the southern part of the city to the northern part, damaging the Mall at Turtle Creek, the Jonesboro Municipal Airport, an Anheuser-Busch granary and local shops.

Multiple cars on a freight train had also been knocked over, Ms. Smith said.

“Right now, we have a great amount of damage,” she said, adding that the authorities from across northeast Arkansas had been summoned to assess the damage.

Jeff Presley, Jonesboro’s E-911 director, told KAIT, a local television station that the authorities were conducting searches in the area near the Mall at Turtle Creek.

Several vehicles were overturned, KAIT reported, and officials had set up a command center in the area.

“I am paying close attention to the report of a tornado hit in Jonesboro,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson wrote on Twitter. “I know there is property damage. Just praying all is safe.”

Rick Smith, a warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Norman, Okla., said his son had been in the tornado.

“He’s okay but there’s a lot of damage,” Mr. Smith wrote on Twitter. “So scary.”

The tornado struck Jonesboro at about 5 p.m. before moving northeast, according to the National Weather Service office in Little Rock.

Source : NYTimes | NewsColony: World News

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