VAN, Texas -- Emergency responders searched through splintered wreckage Monday after a line of tornadoes battered several small communities in Texas and Arkansas, killing at least five people.
Scores of others were hurt, some critically.
In Texas, a tornado on Sunday pummeled Van, according to Chuck Allen, fire marshal and emergency management coordinator for Van Zandt County.
"We're easily looking at 50 to 100 homes here in the city that were damaged or destroyed," Allen said.
Authorities confirmed two deaths. Allen said the two people who died, whom he did not name, were a husband and wife.
Two of the city's schools were damaged, and all of them were closed Monday as officials worked out a plan to consolidate in the buildings that remained intact.
"It's a terrible thing for a city to come out like we did, but it's a great thing the way the people have responded," Mayor Dean Stone said.
For much of the day, eight people were unaccounted for in Van, a city of 2,600 that's about 70 miles southeast of Dallas.
But by late Monday night, Texas Department of Public Safety Trooper Jean Dark said everyone on the missing list had been accounted for. However, she said that just to be safe, cadaver dogs were checking the area.
Officials confirmed that the tornado was an EF3, with winds from 135 mph to 140 mph, Allen said.
Rescuers went door to door. Damage was widespread, with trees uprooted and numerous homes and buildings flattened or ripped apart.
At least 42 people were injured, according to two East Texas hospitals. Four patients were in critical condition.
James Crawford and his wife, Thelma, rode out the storm in their mobile home in the area with some of Van's worst damage.
They were in bed and did not have time to run, Thelma Crawford said. All she could do was roll over and give her husband a bear hug while they held on.
Thelma Crawford said she believes their home lifted off the ground a bit, then came back down.
"We're like family in that neighborhood," she said. "When one of them gets hurt, I hurt."
In some cases, the fronts of homes were sheared off, revealing living room furniture tossed in a jumble. Houses were spray painted with an X to indicate they had been searched by emergency workers.
Kimberli Shane held a muddy hand to her forehead as she watched friends and neighbors salvage furniture from the home she rented.
"All I could really hear was the house pulling apart," she said. "And my son saying, 'Oh, no, it's right over us.'"
In Arkansas, a young couple, both in their late 20s, died trying to shield their daughter from the storm when a twister hit their mobile home late Sunday in Nashville.
On Saturday, a tornado killed a man in Eastland County, Texas, west of Fort Worth.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster Monday in Bosque, Clay, Denton, Eastland, Gaines, Montague and Van Zandt counties. The declaration authorizes further mobilization of state resources to assist affected communities.
Preliminary reports indicate 20 to 25 tornadoes formed Sunday in South Dakota, Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas, according to meteorologist Greg Carbin of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
The storm system was forecast to slowly move east. Thunderstorms were forecast from Texas to the Great Lakes region.
"This is certainly not an atypical system for spring where you've got the remnants of winter but the onset of summer," Carbin said.
The same storm system dumped 11 inches of rain in some places in North Texas -- more than in March and April combined -- and caused widespread flooding. Firefighters in Corsicana, 60 miles southwest of Van, recovered the body of a driver who had ventured into the floodwaters after his vehicle stalled in a swollen creek.
In Denton County, north of Fort Worth, people were rescued by helicopter from the roofs of cars and houses.
The heavy rain caused a large sinkhole to open up in Granbury, about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth. The 40-foot-wide sinkhole swallowed the parking lot of a supermarket and damaged water and sewer lines beneath, WFAA-TV reported.
In Lake City, Iowa, a suspected tornado tore the roof from a high school as about 150 students, family and faculty attended an awards ceremony Sunday night.
Dave Birks, girls basketball coach at South Central Calhoun High School, said people were able to flee to the basement and locker room area about two minutes before the twister arrived.
"The lights went off, and everyone's ears kind of popped," Birks said, adding that school windows were blown out and insulation was scattered nearby. He also said the high-jump pit from the school's outdoor athletic complex was missing, and hurdles were scattered.
The Denver area received several inches of snow Sunday, snow fell in South Dakota, and flurries continued in parts of the Plains on Monday.
Information for this article was contributed by Claudia Lauer, David Warren, Kelly P. Kissel, Allen Reed and staff members of The Associated Press and by Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.
A Section on 05/12/2015