With the final reckoning yet to be considered... 21 people dead and more than 265 injured, Visnews cameras went to the city of St.Louis U.S.A. Feb 10 to film scenes of tornado disaster.

The tornado swept the city without warning, crashed the tower of a TV station onto nearby buildings, blasted and made roofless the St.Louis sports arena. Worst hit house was in the Negro district where eight people died - including a mother and six children.

Rescue workers are still burrowing into the wreckage of tenemented buildings for seven missing people.

The tornado engulfed the sleeping city, - took only two minutes to cause GBP4 1/2M: damage, forty-one buildings destroyed and 1,725 estimated damaged.

St.Louis has now been declared an "Emergency Area" by President Eisenhower.

Workers still struggle to clear the debris filling the streets. With no warning from forecasters, the tornado followed a violent thunderstorm. Last St.Louis tornado disaster was September 1927 when a tornado following the same path - from the south-west - killed 100 people.