CBS News
Clean up begins after tornadoes hammer parts of Iowa and Nebraska; further storms expected Saturday
Residents began sifting through the rubble Saturday after a tornado plowed through suburban Omaha, Nebraska, demolishing homes and businesses as it moved for miles through farmland and into subdivisions, then slamming an Iowa town.
The Friday night tornadoes wreaked havoc in the Midwest, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes.
There have been several injuries but no fatalities reported.
By Saturday morning, the sounds of chainsaws filled the air in the Elkhorn neighborhood of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million. Lumber from the damaged homes lay in piles. Fences were knocked over and the trees were skeletal, missing most of their branches.
Power outages peaked at 10,000, but had dropped to 4,300 by morning.
“We watched it touch down about 200 yards over there,” Elkhorn resident Pat Woods told CBS News. “And then we went to get shelter and we came, but we could hear it going through. When we came back up, our fence was gone and we looked over to the northwest and the whole neighborhood is gone.”
Josh Funk / AP
Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said Saturday that the fire department had completed its search of damaged homes and structures. He described the injuries as minor.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted on the social media platform X that he had ordered state resources to be made available to help. He and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds planned to tour damaged areas. And Pillen planned a news conference later Saturday in Omaha.
The National Weather Service was still evaluating the number and strength of the twisters.
One of them hit an industrial building to the west of Omaha, in Nebraska’s Lancaster County, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated and the three injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.
Sheriff’s officials there also said they had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, Nebraska.
Another tornado passed over the eastern edge of Omaha, directly through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city’s airport. The passenger terminal was not hit, but officials halted aircraft operations to assess damage before reopening the facility, Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy said.
Josh Funk / AP
After hitting the airport, the storm moved into Iowa, taking aim at the small town of Minden.
Forty to 50 homes were completely destroyed. Two injuries were reported but none were life-threatening, said Jeff Theulen, chief deputy of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, at a late Friday briefing.
“It’s heartbreaking to see these people who have lost houses, cars, essentially their life until they have to rebuild it,” he said, urging people to stay away because of downed power lines.
At the Minden United Church of Christ, which survived the storm and has become a community hub of help and support, there were plans to take 4-wheel-drive vehicles out to devastated parts of town to bring meals to those who need them, Pastor Eric Biehl said.
“A lot of people are just kind of in shock,” Biehl said. “It’s all overwhelming now.”
Tammy Pavich, who stores equipment on the west edge of town, said she “kind of breathed a sigh of relief” after the first round of tornadoes moved through Omaha. Then, she recalled, the storm “hit Minden dead-on.”
Margery A. Beck / AP
Todd Lehan, a lifelong resident of the town, said he took shelter in a windowless basement.
“It sounded like a vacuum cleaner on top of your house,” he recalled.
Even as the National Weather Service worked to evaluate the damage, the forecast for Saturday was ominous. It issued tornado watches early Saturday for northwestern Texas and across western Oklahoma.
Tens of millions of Americans remain under the threat of severe storms. A system bringing powerful thunderstorms, hail, damaging wind gusts and possible tornadoes is sweeping across the South and Central regions of the country, while Iowa and Missouri remain under threat for strong tornadoes.
The world’s oldest mummies have been around longer than the mummified pharaohs of Egypt and their ornate tombs — but the ravages of time, human development and climate change are putting these relics at risk.
Chile’s Atacama Desert was once home to the Chincorro people, an ancient population that began mummifying their dead 5,000 years ago, two millennia before the Egyptians did, according to Bernando Arriaza, a professor at the University of Tarapaca.
The arid desert has preserved mummified remains and other clues in the environment that give archaeologists information about how the Chincorro people once lived.
The idea to mummify bodies likely came from watching other remains naturally undergo the process amid the desert’s dry conditions. The mummified bodies were also decorated with reed blankets, clay masks, human hair and more, according to archaeologists.
While UNESCO has designated the region as a World Heritage Site, the declaration may not save all of the relics. Multiple museums, including the Miguel de Azapa Archaeological Museum in the ancient city of Arica, put the Chincorro culture on display. Some mummies and other relics are safely ensconced in those climate-controlled exhibits, but the remains still hidden in the arid desert remain at risk.
“If we have an increase in sea surface temperatures, for example, across the coast of northern Chile, that would increase atmospheric humidity,” said Claudio LaTorre, a paleo-ecologist with the Catholic University of Chile. “And that in turn would generate decomposition, (in) places where you don’t have decomposition today, and you would lose the mummies themselves.”
Other clues that archaeologists can find in the environment may also be lost.
“Human-induced climate change is one aspect that we’re really worried about, because it’ll change a number of different aspects that are forming the desert today,” said LaTorre.
Arriaza is working to raise awareness about the mummies, hoping that that will lead to even more preservation.
“It’s a big, big challenge because you need to have resources,” Arriaza said. “It’s everybody’s effort to a common goal, to preserve the site, to preserve the mummies.”
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
NEW YORK – The man accused of killing three people when drove drunk into a crowd on the Lower East Side on July 4th was arraigned on a host of charges Saturday.
Daniel Hyden of Monmouth Junction, N.J. is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide, aggravated vehicular assault, manslaughter, assault and operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated charges. Hyden was driving with a suspended license, prosecutors said.
According to prosecutors, Hyden, 44, drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck into the crowd at Corlears Hook Park just before 9 p.m. local time. He allegedly ran through a stop sign at the intersection of Water and Cherry Streets, drove up onto the sidewalk, slammed through the chain link fence, and into the crowd.
Eleven people were killed or injured, prosecutors said. The three people killed have been identified as Lucille Pinkney, 59, and her son Herman Pinkney, 38, and Ana Morel, 43. Another person was critically injured, and seven others hospitalized. The youngest victim was 11, according to prosecutors.
Responding police officers say they found Hyden on the ground next to the driver’s-side door, wearing pants but no shirt or shoes. He had bloodshot eyes, was stumbling and there was “a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage on his breath.”
“I hope we get justice”
Photos provided
On Friday, Family members of the victims returned to the scene, some breaking down in tears.
“I hope we get justice for my brother and my mother,” Diamond Pinkney said. “Herman, I love you. I’m going to do you proud.”
“We’re all devastated with this. It breaks my heart, and I’m so sad about it,” neighbor Nereida Garcia said.