Crews search for bodies of tornado victims

EVANSVILLE -- Crews broke the containment walls of a large drainage pond to search its bottom Monday, the day after the nation's deadliest tornado in years loaded it with wreckage from a smashed mobile home park.\nOne body was found midday Monday in the pond, raising the death toll to 23 along the path of the tornado that struck southern Indiana and Kentucky early Sunday with winds possibly topping 200 mph that reduced houses to splinters and obliterated mobile homes. The official death toll of 23 includes an unborn fetus whose mother was eight months pregnant at the time of her death. \nEighteen people died at the Eastbrook Mobile Home Park on Evansville's southeast side, and four others were killed in neighboring Warrick County. A list of some 200 people feared missing from the mobile home park had been whittled down to a couple of dozen by late Monday afternoon, said Eric Williams, Vanderburgh County chief deputy sheriff.\nDozens remained hospitalized Monday as hundreds of survivors faced trying to recover without the homes they had made amid the Ohio River bottomlands.\nState officials said nearly 600 homes in Vanderburgh and Warrick counties were destroyed or sustained major damage. Gov. Mitch Daniels declared a state of emergency for the area as he asked the federal government for disaster assistance.\nAuthorities said they believed all survivors and bodies had been removed from the mobile home park wreckage. Recovery efforts Monday focused on the park's retention pond, where searchers had found four bodies Sunday.\n"It is the one spot in this area that we have not thoroughly searched because it is under water," Williams said.\nResidents of the park had scattered as authorities barred them from the area while cleanup and recovery efforts continued. Only a handful had sought help at area shelters, officials said.\nRick Kalishun spent Monday at a local hospital, where his 4-year-old son Trystan was recovering from a punctured lung he suffered as the tornado hit their mobile home.\nAfter the tornado hit, "I was sitting on the couch looking at the sky," Kalishun said. "I saw the 60-inch TV from the front of the living room -- it ended up on the recliner, just like someone laid it there screen face up," he said.\nThe tornado cut a swath of devastation at least 20 miles long and about a quarter-mile wide. Despite the loss of property and life, many survivors said they were not concerned about rebuilding their lives.\n"God's eyes were on us. Possessions can be replaced, lives can't," said Keegan Krabtree, who was at a Red Cross shelter with deep scratches on his face, suffered when the tornado hit his mobile home. "There were a lot of lives lost in this one, and I pray for their families, because every minute I'm breathing, they're not."\nAuthorities kept residents outside the mobile home park Monday, allowing only rare exceptions such as when a couple returned to retrieve medication from their home.\nDuring an escorted tour of the park by reporters, a green parrot that apparently belonged to one of the park's residents flew out of a pile of storm debris and landed in a tree, which was covered in bits of pink and yellow insulation and white aluminum siding. Authorities said about 60 pets had been found and taken to nearby shelters.\nThe tornado tore off about half the roof of Barbara Bullock's home in the town of Newburgh, a few miles east of the devastated mobile home park. She had placed a wooden pumpkin with the words "We give thanks to God" in the blown-out window of her living room.\nBullock, 52, said she and her husband were sleeping when the tornado hit, waking as the bedroom windows were shattered in their home of 26 years.\n"Believe it or not, I just praise God for being alive," she said. "Everything else can be replaced."\nAssociated Press writer Chris Havlik contributed to this report.