The death toll from a massive tornado which ravaged a Missouri town has hit 116 and is expected to rise, making it the deadliest single twister in modern record, officials said Monday. The massive twister cut a swath of destruction four miles (6.4 kilometers) long and three quarters of a mile (more than a kilometer) wide through the town of Joplin on Sunday.
"Three quarters of the town of 50,000 people was destroyed so it's going to go higher," Christy Bertelson, a spokeswoman for Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, told AFP. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the highest death toll from a single tornado was recorded in Flint, Michigan in 1953 with 116 fatalities.
The death toll in Joplin has already matched that and is expected to be even higher. US weather officials said the tornado that hit at dinnertime on Sunday may have been the single deadliest in the country since 1953. Rescue crews from throughout the region worked all night and into Monday morning in the town of about 50,000 people, searching for anyone still alive in the rubble.