Holly Lammert had been working on a papier-mâché sculpture in the backyard of her St. Louis home when tornado sirens rang out. Before she could get her 10-year-old daughter into the basement, the winds began.
On Saturday morning, she surveyed the damage in her community from one of several tornadoes that tore across the nation since late Friday, killing at least 23 people. Pieces of her neighbor’s roof were in her backyard. There were dozens of jagged tree limbs and trunks in her community garden. And at a nearby church, the bell tower had crumbled into dusty piles of bricks and stones.
“This poor neighborhood,” Ms. Lammert said. “I don’t know how we will come back.”
And that was only a fraction of the destruction left after tornadoes ripped through homes and killed people in at least three states: Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. Officials warned the death toll could rise as they assessed the damage on Saturday, and dozens more were injured.
The spring tornado season has been especially brutal in this part of the country, coming just weeks after similar storms caused deadly devastation in the region. On Friday, these tornadoes were caused by a major storm over the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic.
In Kentucky, at least 14 people were killed, Gov. Andy Beshear said on Saturday morning. The governor is expected to tour the damage in Laurel County, about 90 miles south of Lexington, later on Saturday. The sheriff’s department there sent staff to the Faith Assembly Church in London, Ky. to help people trying to locate a loved one.
“All of our resources are now focused on rescue efforts,” he said in a post on social media. “Please pray for the families affected.”
The Kentucky National Guard was mobilized along with emergency medical workers to treat the injured and assess the damage, the agency said.
Kentucky’s emergency management agency described “a more complete, and more painful picture” emerging, saying that hundreds of Kentuckians had lost their homes or suffered property damage. And emergency crews were at work in the area near London-Corbin Airport, which was hit around midnight Friday.
The state is also still struggling to recover from flooding in February, with two dozen more counties just approved on Wednesday for federal aid. This week’s storm comes at a precarious moment for disaster relief efforts, as sweeping staffing and funding cuts have upended the usual processes for getting assistance from the federal government.
Across the border in Missouri, the tornadoes killed at least seven people, five of them in St. Louis, and injured dozens more. A tornado also killed two people in Scott County, in southeastern Missouri, according to the county sheriff’s office.
In St. Louis, cellphone towers were taken out and traffic lights were down, city authorities said, and there was severe damage to homes and buildings.
“Last night it was sirens and power chain saws — that’s what I went to sleep to last night,” said Paul Rhodes, 82, as he searched for a place to charge his phone after high winds took out the power at his home Friday.
As sirens rang out on Friday in nearby Forest Park, a nearly 1,300-acre public park that houses several of the city’s cultural sites, workers quickly hustled visitors off the grounds and the handball court into a basement until the wind died down. By Saturday morning, light fixtures were shattered, structures had splintered into pieces and some entrances to the park were blocked by fallen trees.
“I had no idea it was going to be like this,” said Alecia Boone, who was stunned by the damage when she arrived for her morning run in the park, a mile from her house.
Steve Burkhardt, the facilities and security manager for Forest Park Forever, which works with the city to protect the urban park, said “it’s a whole different experience to see how beautiful the park is before and how it looks now.”
“It’s heartbreaking,” he added.
When the storm swept into Virginia, two people died in separate instances after trees fell on their vehicles, according to authorities.
More storms were expected to bring large hail, strong winds and tornadoes across North Texas and the southern plains on Saturday, the National Weather Service said.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
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