Kimbunga chaua watu 116 Marekani

Rescue crews dug through piles of splintered houses and crushed cars today in a desperate search for victims of a half-mile-wide tornado that killed at least 116 people when it blasted much of this Missouri town off the map and slammed straight into its hospital.

The tornado was the deadliest single twister in the U.S. in nearly 60 years and the second major natural disaster in less than a month.

Thousands of houses have been reduced to slabs, cars crushed like soda cans and shaken residents have been roaming streets in search of missing family members.

Yet despite the power of the twister, the danger was by no means over. Fires from gas leaks burned across town, and more violent weather loomed today, including the threat of hail, high winds and even more tornadoes.

'I've never seen such devastation - just block upon block upon block of homes just completely gone,' said former state legislator Gary Burton who showed up to help at a volunteer center at Missouri Southern State University.

Unlike the multiple storms that killed more than 300 people last month across the South, Joplin was smashed by just one exceptionally powerful tornado.

Thousands of people were left without homes to go tonight after the deadliest single tornado to strike the United States in over 60 years touched down on Missouri, reducing the city of Joplin to rubble, ripping buildings apart and killing at least 116 people in a 6-mile path of destruction.

Authorities said they had rescued seven people alive on Monday, but emergency warned that the death toll could climb higher as heavy winds, strong rain and hail quarter-sized hail stones hampered the search effort.

Meteorologists issued a new tornado warning for the devastated city as forecasters warned large swathes of the country to brace for more big storms on Tuesday.

A tornado watch was issued on Monday for Oklahoma and parts of southern Kansas due to an 'evolving tornado threat', said Russell Schneider, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center.