Too Close for Comfort as Alabama Tornado Misses Du Quoin Couple

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Tornadoes that cut a 300-mile swath across the south earlier this week were too close for comfort for a Du Quoin couple living just outside Tuscaloosa, Ala.

The Du Quoin Evening Call received information on Thursday that longtime residents Wayne and Vicky Holmes live just two miles outside Tuscaloosa where one of the tornadoes struck. A phone call with family members did not give details except to say that the couple is okay.

Holmes is working in Alabama to fulfill his pension requirements in coal mining.

At least 297 were killed across six states in Wednesday's outbreak.

President Barack Obama planned a trip to Tuscaloosa today to view storm damage and meet Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and shattered families. Late Thursday, Obama signed a disaster declaration for the state to provide federal aid to those who seek it.

Those who took shelter as the storms descended trickled back to their homes Thursday, ducking police roadblocks and fallen limbs and power lines to reclaim their belongings.

The storms did the brunt of their damage in Alabama. More than two-thirds of the victims lived there, and large cities bore the scars of half-mile-wide twisters that rumbled through. The high death toll seems surprising in the era of Doppler radar and precise satellite forecasts. But the storms were just too wide and too powerful to avoid a horrifying body count.