A rare tornado ripped through St. Louis. Days later, a community picks up the pieces

The tornado that struck St. Louis on Friday afternoon was an EF-3, with winds up to 152 mph. “I literally had like this close of a brush with death,” Navy veteran Omar Sykes says. Five people died, 38 were injured, and about 5,000 buildings were damaged by the severe weather. By Sunday afternoon, more than 23,000 homes and businesses had still had no power, mayor says. The National Weather Service says the tornado that hit the city on Friday was anEF-3; winds were up to152 mph. The storm was “one of the worst storms in the city’s history,’’ Mayor Cara Cara Spencer says of the response to the storm. ‘I’m like, oh, I’ve seen it all, I seen it. I seen the whole thing,’ one man says of a tornado that ripped through his neighborhood. ’I thought I was going to fly away like the Wizard of Oz.’

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