Storms Tear Across Wide Swath of Nation

CHICAGO, March 1 -- A fierce line of storms stretching from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico spawned deadly tornadoes and blizzards Thursday, killing at least seven people in Alabama, state officials said, and burying chunks of the Midwest under a foot or more of snow.

A twister raced through a residential neighborhood and slammed into Enterprise High School in Enterprise, Ala., knocking down walls and ceilings, leaving at least five dead. Students ran from the building as soldiers from nearby Fort Rucker joined emergency workers in rescue operations.

Cars flipped over, trees snapped, and roofs were ripped from buildings.

"I pulled out two dead little girls," a construction worker told WSFA-TV, reporting that a ceiling had collapsed.

A student named Caleb told a WSFA reporter that he was in science class when the twister hit: "The roof came down on us. Luckily it was built out of cinder blocks, so the walls held up. A lot of the exterior bricks came in and hit some of the people around us. "It's pretty bad. I don't really know how to describe it."

In the chaotic hours after the storm, state officials said as many as 18 people were dead. Emergency management spokeswoman Yasamie Richardson blamed confusion at the disaster sites.

Alabama authorities reported that one person was killed in Millers Ferry. Earlier Thursday, another tornado killed a 7-year-old girl in southern Missouri. Two people died in North Dakota when their car skidded from a slick highway, and one person died in Nebraska after shoveling snow.

At least three people were reported killed in Georgia as the storm moved east from Alabama, two of them after a tornado struck a hospital.

As snow continued to fall, hundreds of schools and offices throughout the region closed early. Bus service was suspended in Omaha, a rarity, when the storm descended Thursday morning. Part of a supermarket roof collapsed in Milwaukee.

In Iowa, where 35,000 households have been without electricity since a powerful storm last weekend, authorities closed long sections of Interstate 80 and Interstate 35 because of heavy snow and high winds. Gov. Chet Culver (D) opened more than 100 shelters.

As night fell, another 5,000 households had lost power, and the rough conditions were slowing emergency workers as they struggled to restore power from the earlier tempest.

"This is certainly the biggest storm we've had in decades," said Bret Voorhees, chief spokesman of the Iowa homeland security office, referring to the one-two punch that started last weekend. "We've got a blizzard going on now. We've had over a foot of snow in western Iowa."