At least 54 people were killed and hundreds injured Tuesday and yesterday by dozens of tornadoes that plowed across Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. It was the nation’s deadliest barrage of twisters in almost 23 years.

The storms flattened entire streets, smashed warehouses, and sent tractor-trailers flying. Houses were reduced to splintered piles of lumber. Crews going door-to-door to search for bodies had to contend with downed power lines, snapped trees, and flipped-over cars. Hundreds of houses were damaged or destroyed. Authorities had no immediate cost estimate of the damage.

“It looks like the Lord took a Brillo pad and scrubbed the ground,” Governor Bredesen of Tennessee, who surveyed the damage from a helicopter, said.

President Bush gave assurances his administration stood ready to help. Teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sent to the region and activated an emergency center in Georgia. Most communities had ample warning that the storms were coming. The conditions for bad weather had lined up so perfectly that the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., put out an alert six days in advance. While the weather was unusually severe, winter tornadoes are not uncommon.