A week after a violent tornado touched down in Mississippi, killing 25 people and causing extensive property damage, a powerful tornado swept through the southern state of Arkansas on Friday, March 31, causing the less than three dead. Under the blow of a violent storm, a theater has meanwhile partially collapsed in the state of Illinois, in the north of the country, killing at least one person and injuring 28, according to the authorities.

In Arkansas, two people died in the small town of Wynne, governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who declared a state of emergency and deployed a hundred national guards, told a press conference. “Central Arkansas sustained major damage,” she tweeted.

A third person died in Pulaski County, where the state capital Little Rock is located, hard hit by the tornado, as local authorities confirmed to Agence France-Presse (AFP). “About 30 people were transported to hospitals” in the city, Frank Scott, the mayor of Little Rock, also told the press.

Gutted homes in Arkansas

The tornado in Arkansas hit in the afternoon, sweeping through several neighborhoods in Little Rock. The United States National Weather Service (NWS) has also issued tornado warnings for parts of neighboring states, such as Tennessee, Illinois and Iowa.

The latter left in its wake a spectacle of desolation, with overturned cars, huge uprooted trees, telephone poles broken in two and hundreds of gutted houses.

Lara Farrar, a reporter for a local business publication, said she was “totally shocked” upon discovering the damage near her home in Little Rock. “The roof of some buildings was completely blown off,” she testified, sharing images of houses destroyed, walls partially ripped off, trees on the ground.

“The neighborhood was just completely flattened and destroyed,” she added, citing extensive destruction in a strip about 500 meters wide, but with “very little damage” outside.

More than 78,000 people were without power in Arkansas after the tornado hit, according to the US website Poweroutage.

The governor’s services were unable to provide AFP with an immediate report, but a hospital told a local newspaper that it had received “several” people in serious condition.

Collapse of a theater in the middle of a concert in Illinois

In the north of the country, in the small town of Belvidere, west of Chicago, in the State of Illinois, part of the roof and the facade of the Apollo Theater collapsed during a violent storm. A concert by a heavy metal band was underway, according to local media.

Shawn Schadle, Belvidere Fire Chief, reported one death and 28 injuries, including five hospitalized with serious injuries. More than twenty ambulances were mobilized, according to the local press.

Television footage showed injured spectators being evacuated on stretchers, and photos on social media showed a waist-deep pile of debris and a gaping hole in the roof in the venue.

Tornadoes, meteorological phenomena as impressive as they are difficult to predict, are common in the United States, especially in the center and south of the country. In December 2021, approximately 80 people also lost their lives following a series of tornadoes in Kentucky.