Tornadoes' death toll mounts; rescue efforts underway

Jessie Halladay and Doyle Rice in USA Today: A series of tornadoes that cut a swath of death and destruction across at least 10 states left stunned residents digging through rubble Saturday, looking for survivors and bodies.

The death toll stood at 31 early Saturday, including 14 Indiana, 13 in Kentucky, three in Ohio and one in Alabama. Tornadoes also were reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.

Massive thunderstorms threw off scores of tornadoes, crushing entire blocks of homes, ripping down power lines and tossing cars, buses and trucks on roadways made impassable by debris. The scale of the devastation and the breadth of the storms made it impossible to immediately assess the storm system's damage.

At least four people were killed in and around the town of Chelsea in Jefferson County, Ind. First responders found a 4-year-old boy and his great-grandparents lying on the ground 50 feet from where the elderly couple's home was blown off its foundation and thrown more than 100 feet. "All of this happened in less than 30 seconds," said volunteer firefigthter Cory Thomas.

In Marysville, Ind., most of the several dozen homes that make up the town were destroyed. "Marysville is completely gone," Clark County Sheriff's Maj. Chuck Adams said.

Kentucky declared a state of emergency, and Indiana officials said they were discussing that. Authorities in Ohio planned to survey areas Saturday to determine the extent of the damage there....

February 29, 2012. a view of where a church used to stand in Harrisburg, Illinois, on U.S. Route 45 at south corner with Illinois Route 34 and Illinois Route 145, adjacent to the United States Forest Service office. Shot by Pat York, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Indiana flood buyout program discussed

Jason Jacobs in the Brazil Times (Indiana): Area residents learned more about a voluntary buyout program of homes located in a floodway. On Wednesday, Indiana Department of Homeland Security (IDHS) Mitigation Program Director Manuela Johnson led a meeting about the Mitigation Acquisition Program at Brazil City Hall.

"Our purpose is to provide general details about the program and make the public aware of the options being looked at," Johnson said. "Should there be enough interest generated, we will conduct more meetings in the future to go over specifics."

She told those in attendance the program is sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which allocates grant monies for the acquisition of homes located in a floodway. "The program is 75-percent federal funds, and requires 25-percent local funding, which does not necessarily have to be cash," Johnson said. "However, the program is also 100-percent voluntary so the city and individuals are not forced to participate. Also, at any point up to three days after the funding is allocated, an individual may back out if they change their mind."

...She added the acquisition program is not a quick process, and it could take approximately three years for funding to be released to agencies. "Normally, it takes about six months just to write the grant application," Johnson said. "Part of the reason for this is we have to pull the property cards to get the assessed value, take photos of the homes for an environmental and historical survey and take a survey of the first floor elevation for the cost-benefit analysis."

..."Once title work and closing on the property is complete, the home may either be relocated or demolished, and the land has to be held by the city into perpetuity, or in other words, forever," she said. "The land is then considered 'flood storage,' and cannot be sold to anyone else, including developers. It can be turned into a public park or walking path, and we even had one community turn it into soccer fields."

She informed the crowd a priority list is composed of homes with the most need to be acquired and attempts are made to get an entire group of homes in one area, rather than "hop scotching" a home here and there, in order to provide a more efficient floodway....

The Clay County Courthouse in Brazil, Indiana, shot by William Eccles