| Posted Monday, May. 23, 2011, at 9:51 AM EDT
Eighty-nine people and counting have been confirmed dead in Joplin, Missouri, after one of the deadliest tornadoes in state history tore a 6-mile path across the southwestern part of the state on Sunday.
The twister is estimated to have been a half-mile across when it hit the town, destroying much of the city and ripping the roof off its hospital.
“It is just utter devastation anywhere you look to the south and the east—businesses, apartment complexes, houses, cars, trees, schools, you name it, it is leveled, leveled,” Joplin City Councilwoman Melodee Cobert-Kean told Reuters.
The death toll is expected to climb Monday as local officials conduct a door-to-door search of the damaged area, the Associated Press reports. The process was expected to be slowed by downed power lines and a series of gas leaks that caused fires across the city overnight.
“You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing. That’s really what it looked like,” Kerry Sachetta, the principal of a local high school that was destroyed, told the AP. “I couldn’t even make out the side of the building. It was total devastation in my view. I just couldn’t believe what I saw.”
The Joplin tornado was one of 68 reported across seven Midwest states over the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
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