St. Louis begins cleanup after tornado

ST. LOUIS -- Debris from splintered homes covered the ground in neighborhoods around St. Louis, while topped trees and overturned cars littered lawns and driveways. From the air, one home looked like a dollhouse that had had its roof lifted off.

Amid such damage, officials appeared awed that a tornado that roared through the area Friday night, striking the airport and several nearby suburbs, hadn't seriously injured anyone.

"It almost feels like a little bit of divine intervention when you look at the devastation," said Gov. Jay Nixon, who flew over the area to survey the damage.

Nixon said President Barack Obama pledged federal assistance Saturday during a phone conversation. Some 750 homes in the St. Louis region were damaged, and fewer than 100 were uninhabitable, the governor said.

Cleanup swung into full gear Saturday. With the din of chain saws and pounding hammers in the background, homeowners sifted through wreckage while crews scrambled to restore power to the 26,000 customers still without it.

At Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, workers boarded up windows and swept up glass in the main terminal, where the twister had torn off part of the roof and blown out half of the large, plate-glass windows. The domed design of the main terminal, dating to the mid-1950s, was the handiwork of Minoru Yamasaki, the Modernist architect of New York City's World Trade Center twin towers toppled in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The airport reopened last night for a handful of arriving flights, and officials expected around 70 percent of the scheduled arrivals and departures to go on as planned early Sunday. The damaged concourse was likely to remain closed for up to two months.

"We're not going to have the prettiest airport tomorrow, but we will have an operating airport," airport director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge said.

A spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines Co. said one of its planes was damaged when the wind pushed a conveyor belt for loading baggage into it. Five other planes on the ground when the tornado hit were OK, spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said. Southwest -- the biggest carrier at Lambert, with 85 departures per day -- canceled all St. Louis flights through 4 p.m.