The Associated Press
Spencer, S.D.
    A tornado wiped out most of Spencer, a small farming community, killing six people and destroying its post office, fire station, library, bank and all four churches.
    "Ninety per cent of it is just plum gone," Mayor Rocky Kirby said.
    Only about two-dozen homes survived, mostly along the two northernmost streets in the town of about 300 people.
    An estimated 150 people were injured, many of them elderly.  Eighteen of the 41 people treated at hospitals were admitted.
    "This place looks terrible.  It is like a combat zone, like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki," Gov. Bill Janklow said.
    Witnesses said the twister struck without warning and may have been up to 400-metres wide.
    It was part of a swarm of thunderstorms that battered the upper Midwest on Saturday night and early Sunday.
    Upwards of 900,000 homes and businesses lost power in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and five more deaths were blamed on those storms.
    Thunderstorms stretched into New England on Sunday with high winds.  About 30 houses were damaged and a dozen people injured when the storms moved through Mechanicville, N.Y., about 30 kilometres north of Albany.
    In South Dakota, the damage was concertrated at Spencer, 72 kilometres west of Sioux Falls.
    The town's water tower was ripped off its steel legs, which still stood high enough to hold a car suspended about 1.5 metres off the ground.  outside town, fence posts were ripped out of the ground and wire fencing was would up in a spiral.