A tornado with 150 mph winds has ripped through North Carolina and destroyed a major factory belonging to pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Aerial images reveal that the roof has been severely crumpled and partially torn off the massive building, while trucks and 50,000 pallets of drugs are strewn across the site.
Officials in two counties say 16 people were injured, including two with life-threatening wounds, as storms passed through North Carolina.
89 buildings have been reported damaged so far.
The tornado started near Nashville, North Carolina, around 12:35 pm.
It then swept northeast through Rocky Mount, 60 miles east of Raleigh, where it devastated the Pfizer facility.
It ran out of steam in Scotland Neck, 40 miles from where it began.
There were no reports of any serious injuries.
However, a lot of severe damage was reported as homes lost their roofs and power lines were downed in Nash County, North Carolina.
Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone said the warehouse bore the brunt of the damage.
“I’ve got reports of 50,000 pallets of medicine that are strewn across the facility and damaged through the rain and the wind,” Stone said.
A Pfizer employee told ABC 11 that they all rushed into the safety zone on hearing of the impending storm.
He said the lights flickered inside the facility and then came a sound “like a bomb went off.”
The noise lasted only around a minute or 90 seconds.
Pfizer said the 250-acre site, with 1.4 million square feet of manufacturing space, “is one of the largest sterile injectable facilities in the world.”
Nearly 25 percent of all sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals are produced at the site, and 400 million units leave the site annually.
It also produces vials, syringes, IV bags, and bottles of anesthesia, analgesia, therapeutics, anti-infectives, and neuromuscular blockers.
“We are assessing the situation to determine the impact on production,” the company said.
“Our thoughts are with our colleagues, our patients, and the community as we rebuild from this weather incident.”
The National Weather Service described the tornado as an EF-3, according to WITN.
The damage assessment is ongoing throughout Nash County,
The EF (Enhance Fujita) scale is a way to measure tornados based on wind speed.
An EF-3 has winds speed up to 165 mph and the scale goes up to EF-5.
The tornado that leveled Joplin, Missouri, was classified as an EF-5 storm.
Videos posted on social media and shared by locals showed the Nash County, North Carolina, churning and kicking up debris in the area.
“I never want to see another one like it again, because it went from sunshine to pitch black, and this storm lasted probably less than a minute – and you can see what it’s done,” Dortches Mayor Jackie Vick told WITN.
“It’s devastation, but the main thing as far as we’ve heard so far, there’s not been any loss of life, some bumps and scrapes and that type thing, but no loss of life, so the rest of it we can deal with.”
The storm also lead to road closures along I-95 in North Carolina as trees came down during the tornado.
According to WRAL, in Nash County 13 people were injured and 89 structures were damaged by the storm.
“We want to thank our municipalities, Nash County volunteer fire departments, surrounding counties, North Carolina Highway Patrol, NCDOT, and North Carolina Emergency Management for their assistance during the emergency response,” said Emergency Services Director Tony Cameron.
“It takes a big team to recover from an event like this.
“We are also fortunate that the number of injured individuals remained very low despite the amount of damage we are seeing.”
In Edgecombe County, three people were injured, including two with severe injuries.