By Kevin Murphy
JOPLIN, Missouri (Reuters) - Search teams accompanied by cadaver dogs on Tuesday picked their way through the rubble of thousands of homes and businesses laid to waste by a massive tornado that killed at least 116 people in Joplin, Missouri.
Authorities stepped up search efforts, racing against forecasts for more bad weather in hopes of finding survivors even as they brace for more death. The rescue effort was hampered by heavy rains that followed Sunday's twister.
Joplin Fire Chief Mitch Randles put the death toll at 116 people, but state emergency management office said it was 117.
Some 1,500 people were reported missing, according to Keith Stammer of Jasper County Emergency Management. That tally could include many who simply have not yet been able to let relatives know they are fine, authorities said.
Among those missing was an 18-month-old boy who was separated from his parents when the twister hit. Hope was fading as the hours passed, said Chris Moreno, who was overseeing triage efforts outside St. John's Hospital, which was evacuated after suffering significant damage.
The boy was in a nearby home and Moreno said searchers feared his body was likely buried in a debris pile.
"We don't want a bulldozer to find the boy four months from now," Moreno said.
U.S. President Barack Obama said he would visit the southwestern Missouri city on Sunday, a day after he returns from a weeklong, four-nation tour in Europe.
"All we can do is let them know that all of America cares deeply about them and that we are going to do absolutely everything we can to make sure that they recover," Obama said in a statement.
"Like all Americans, we have been monitoring what's been taking place very closely and have been ... heartbroken by the images we've seen," Obama told reporters in London.
The tornado that raked Joplin on Sunday was the deadliest single twister in the United States since 1947.
Roaring along a path nearly six miles (9.5 km) long and up to 3/4 mile (1 km) wide, the tornado flattened whole neighbourhoods, splintered trees and flipped over cars and trucks. Some 2,000 homes and many other businesses, schools and other buildings were destroyed.
"Pretty much everybody in town knows somebody they've lost," Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon told CBS News on Tuesday.
He said two law enforcement officials were struck by lightning, one hurt very seriously, during violent thunderstorms on Monday.
There have been hopes fulfilled. Nixon said 17 people were found alive on Monday, although local officials confirmed only seven.
The Joplin tornado was the latest in a string of powerful twisters and storms this spring that have killed more than 300 people and caused more than $2 billion in property damage across Southern U.S. states.
HARROWING TALES
Survivors in Joplin told harrowing stories of seeking shelter from winds of nearly 200 miles per hour (322 kph) in walk-in coolers in restaurants and convenience stores, hiding in bathtubs and closets, and of running for their lives as the tornado neared.
"We were getting hit by rocks, and I don't even know what hit me," said Leslie Swatosh, 22, who huddled on the floor of a liquor store with several others clutching one another as they prayed. When the tornado passed, the store was destroyed but those inside were all alive.
"Everyone in that store was blessed. There was nothing of that store left," she said.
A number of bodies were found along the city's "restaurant row," on the main commercial street, and a local nursing home took a direct hit, said Newton County Coroner Mark Bridges.
At St. John's Hospital, 180 patients cowered as the fierce winds blew out windows and pulled off the roof. According to AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist Alan Reppert, X-ray films from the hospital were found 70 miles (112 km) away.
Six of the confirmed fatalities occurred at the hospital, said spokeswoman Joanne Cox. Five were intensive-care patients who were on ventilators that lost power when the tornado struck, Cox said. The sixth was a visitor, but the circumstances of that death were unclear.
The city's residents were given about 20 minutes' notice when 25 warning sirens sounded Sunday evening, said Stammer, the county emergency management official.
An estimated 20,000 homes and businesses were without power in Joplin.
The death toll topped the 115 people who perished in a 1947 tornado in Woodland, Oklahoma, which killed 181 people.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Steve Holland and Carey Gillam; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Vicki Allen)
