Girl, 5, Elderly Man Dead in Devastating Pliger Twin Twisters

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Category: World News

Published on Wednesday, 18 June 2014 06:24

Written by Janet Walker

The sun rose on day two after catastrophic twin tornadoes tore through the town of Pilger Nebraska, killing two and critically injuring 19 others, and decimating the small rural town in northwest portion of the state.

"We are confirming several EF4 damage points in Pilger. Details of exact wind speed estimates will be provided once the survey is complete," the National Weather Service in Omaha stated through the micro messaging platform twitter.

The twin cyclones barreled down on the small northwestern Nebraska town, surrounded by farms and fields nearing mid crop season, Monday afternoon at approximately 4:00pm EST, as the suspected EF4 unleashed unprecedented fury on the community of 350 inhabitants.

When it was over, Calista Dixon, 5, and David Herout, 74 were dead and 19 others were critically injured as the raging twin twisters caused unparalleled and extraordinary damage.

Cutting a swath through the center of town, the effect of this rare weather phenomenon left in its wake, the central supply area, including the grain silos squashed like soda cans, in other cases the silos simply disappeared, destroyed.

"More than half of the town is gone — absolutely gone," Jerry Weatherholt, a member of the Stanton County Commission, told The Associated Press. "The co-op is gone, the grains bins are gone, and it looks like almost every house in town has some damage," he said as reported in NBC News.

The rare weather phenomenon, created an arch with each F4 Tornado anchored, a mile apart, on each side, ripping through the countryside and bearing down on Pilger which took a direct hit.

Located about 75 miles northwest of Omaha, Pilger, according to officials suffered an almost annihilation with nearly every home experiencing some damage.

NWS has indicated patterns on the ground and the range of the debris field will be assessed as they work to estimate wind speeds and confirm the category of the first deadly tornado to hit the small community since 1999 and Nebraska's first killer storm since 2004. .

It is a miracle the death toll is not higher with the amount of damage the town faced.

The is a developing story