Tornado losses hit home

SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — Residents gathered at a school yesterday, carrying black garbage bags and backpacks as they waited to be taken to their tornado-ravaged neighborhoods to gather necessities from their homes.

Several said they were upset that officials were allowing them only 10 minutes at their houses.

“I understand the need to make sure more people don’t get hurt but it’s still frustrating,” John Catania said.

Mr. Catania got his first look at his flattened house and said it “looked like somebody took a broom and swept the pad clean.”

Worried state officials had said that they didn’t know whether residents would encounter new dangers, including damaged power lines and natural gas mains.

“These guys don’t know what’s under the debris, but that’s the way it is in these situations: We like to do these things ourselves,” state emergency management spokesman Bob Spieldenner said Tuesday.

Police listed condemned homes that owners wouldn’t be allowed to enter.

Tuesday, the day after tornadoes struck the region, firefighters poked through mounds of rubble sometimes 6 to 8 feet high to make sure no one lay beneath them, and utility crews worked around the clock to make sure electricity and gas lines presented no danger.

In disasters like these, Mr. Spieldenner said, the aftermath can bring as much danger as the storm itself.

“That’s the way it was with Hurricane Isabel,” in 2003, the Virginia Department of Emergency Management spokesman said, referring to the last major natural calamity to hit Suffolk, a city of 80,000 west of Norfolk.

“There were more people injured in the cleanup after Isabel than in the storm itself. We had people die of carbon monoxide [from running generators indoors], falling off roofs, falling out of trees,” he said.

Some residents got their first look at the destruction Tuesday. Tom Becker, who rushed home from a vacation in Atlantic City, N.J., found his house barely standing.

“I just want to get in there and get the things that are important to me,” he said. “I know now that it’s gone.”

At least 25 debris cleanup volunteers sanctioned by Operation Blessing, a Virginia Beach charity funded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, were expected to arrive yesterday, said the Rev. Tony Peak, pastor of Suffolk’s nondenominational Open Door Church.

State and local officials were still far from a final estimate of the damages from the Suffolk twister, the worst of six the National Weather Service says hit Virginia. Losses from the lesser storms are already at least $3.5 million, Mr. Spieldenner said. In Suffolk, the destruction could be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Gov. Tim Kaine said he was not certain that the damage qualifies the region for a presidential disaster declaration. The designation allows for low-interest federal loans to help homeowners rebuild.

“We’ve got to survey the needs and see what can be done,” Mr. Kaine, a Democrat, said during a walking tour of a neighborhood of houses local authorities had condemned.

“I’m going to let my guys who do this for a living tell me what the answer to that is, and it usually takes a day or two,” Mr. Kaine said.