At least 14 people died in the southern United States, according to authorities cited by the media, after powerful tornadoes struck Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas overnight from Saturday to Sunday.
Emergency services are still carrying out searches on Sunday to try to find and locate possible survivors in the rubble of buildings blown up by bad weather which also caused large power outages.
The American weather services counted a total of 25 tornadoes on Saturday.
North of Dallas, a tornado killed at least seven people, according to Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington.
“Unfortunately, this figure will increase,” he predicted on The Weather Channel, specifying that research is still underway in the face of “massive damage” on site.
A motorway area was notably ravaged by the storm, while dozens of people took refuge in the service station for protection. “A lot” of people were injured there, said Ray Sappington.
Two people died in western Oklahoma due to another tornado, according to officials cited by local television.
In the state of Arkansas, these phenomena caused a total of five deaths according to authorities cited by a local channel, with the media showing images of destroyed buildings, electrical poles on the ground, and torn tree branches.
The bad weather even went so far as to derail the start of the 108th edition of the Indianapolis 500, much further north and east, with the organizers of this legendary car race asking spectators to leave the stands.
Nearly 500,000 homes were without power on Sunday from Texas in the south to Ohio in the north, according to the poweroutage.us website.
Storm warnings are still in effect on Sunday.
Tornadoes, a meteorological phenomenon that is as impressive as it is difficult to predict, are relatively common in the United States, particularly in the center and south of the country.
See footage of the damage in the video above
