Residents in five states began picking up the pieces Thursday after a series of devastating tornadoes struck the southern and central United States, killing at least 55 people and injuring hundreds more.

Tracey Vaughn salvages items from Buddy Russell's house in Oxford, Miss., on Wednesday.
(Bruce Newman/Oxford Eagle/Associated Press)

Rescue crews were to resume searches for more survivors amid the wreckage after earlier efforts were hampered by debris, downed power lines and fallen trees.

Dozens of tornadoes ripped across Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama on Tuesday, flattening homes and sending residents scrambling for shelter. The storms hit as many Americans voted in the Super Tuesday primaries.

Thirty-one people were killed in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and four in Alabama, emergency officials said.

U.S. President George W. Bush is set to tour the region Friday to assess the damage caused by the nation's deadliest set of twisters in more than two decades.

It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985.

Meanwhile, federal and state emergency teams poured into the hardest-hit areas, along with utility workers and insurance claims representatives.

"It's really difficult to see cars overturned, mobile homes flipped over and people's red-brick homes reduced to nothing," American Red Cross official Karen Yaussy told CBC News on Thursday from Gallatin, Tenn.

Harrowing tales of survival also emerged as residents and crews surveyed the devastation.

Rescuers in Castalian Springs, Tenn., described the shock of discovering a baby they thought was a doll blown into a field. 

"We grabbed hold of his neck [to take a pulse] and he took a breath of air and started crying," said David Harmon, a firefighter from a nearby county who was combing the field for tornado victims.

The boy was found at least 100 metres from where his family's house had been, possibly lifted by the storm's fierce winds, according to witnesses at the scene on Thursday. There was no trace of exactly where the house stood. His mother, who did not survive, was found in the same field.

Students freed from wreckage

After an aerial tour of the northern part of his state by helicopter, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen remarked: "It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground."

Students took cover in dormitory bathrooms as the storms closed in on Union University in Jackson, Tenn. More than 20 students at the Southern Baptist school were trapped behind wreckage and jammed doors after the dormitories came down around them. The students were eventually freed.

School officials estimated the cost of rebuilding the heavily damaged campus at around $40 million, while the total price for repairing the city could reach $100 million, the CBC's Mark Kelley reported Thursday from Jackson.  

The storms were part of a rare spasm of winter weather that stretched over the south and central regions. As the extent of the damage quickly became clear, several U.S. presidential candidates paused in their speeches to supporters to remember the victims.

With files from the Associated Press