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Blencoe, Iowa: tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in the remote hills of western Iowa on Wednesday, killing at least four people, while injuring 40 and setting off a frantic search to reach others in the piles of debris and downed trees.
A search and rescue team deployed after the evening twister had to cut their way through branches during a lightning storm to reach the camp where the 93 boys, ages 13 to 18, and 25 staff members were attending a weeklong leadership training camp.
Powerful tornado
"All of the buildings are gone; most of the tents are gone; most of the trees are destroyed," Lloyd Roitstein, president of the Boy Scouts of Mid-America Council, told CNN. "You've got 1,800 acres (730 hectares) of property that are destroyed right now."
Iowa Governor Chet Culver said three people were unaccounted for, but a spokesman for the rescuers, Russ Lawrenson, said all the victims had been found.
The weather service had issued two warnings minutes before the tornado hit, Culver said, but it was not clear whether the camp had sirens.
"Based on what we were seeing on radar it looked like it could have been a very powerful tornado," said Daniel Nietfeld with the National Weather Service.
Lawrenson, of the Mondamin Fire Department, initially said most of the children who were hurt had been hiking when the tornado hit, but later said he could no longer confirm the victims' whereabouts.
The camp was being secured by the National Guard and police.
Flooding
The tornado touched down as Iowa's eastern half grappled with flooding in several of its major cities. The storm threatened to stretch Iowa's emergency response teams even further.
Other areas
Tornadoes also touched down in central Kansas, southern Minnesota and eastern Nebraska.
From Wisconsin to Missouri, officials in the storm-ravaged Midwest on Wednesday fortified levees with sandbags, watching weakened dams and rescuing residents from rising water. However, Iowa was bearing the brunt of it.
Longmire, Washington A helicopter rescued two hikers from high on Mount Rainier on Wednesday after they were caught in a freak June blizzard that caused a third hiker's death.
An Army Chinook helicopter rescued Romanian-born Mariana Burceag, 31, and Daniel Vlad, 34, at about 6.15am (5.15pm, Dubai) from Camp Muir, a staging area for climbers about 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) up the 4,392-metre volcano in Washington state.
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