The call came late Friday to the Rev. Derrick Perkins: Three people were trapped in the Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis after a tornado had toppled part of its steeple, leaving it in dusty piles of bricks and stones.
A signal from one person’s cellphone helped Pastor Perkins and emergency workers find those trapped inside. But one of the people, a beloved longtime ministry leader, was killed, Pastor Perkins said.
“I was in disbelief — heartbroken,” he said, holding back tears. “Not only for the church, but for the entire community.”
The grief and damage there is just a fraction of the devastation from several tornadoes that have ripped across the nation since late Friday, killing at least 27 people in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, and injuring dozens more.
Mayor Cara Spencer of St. Louis said at a Saturday news conference that she would characterize the storm as “one of the worst” in the city’s history. “The devastation is truly heartbreaking,” she said.
In Kentucky, the storm killed at least 18, a number that officials on Saturday warned could still rise. Gov. Andy Beshear said that he worried “there might be a whole block out there where everybody is dead.”
“I hope that’s not the case, but you see five houses in a row, they’re just gone entirely,” he said at a news conference on Saturday. He added, “You have a lot of trauma coming out of this one.”
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