Tornado Toddler Angel Babcock Dies As 39 Others Killed in Midwest Storms

A toddler who survived being sucked into a tornado last week has died of her injuries, family members said Monday.

Angel Babcock was found alive in a field Friday after a tornado ripped through the 15-month-old's mobile home in Indiana, killing her parents and two siblings.

But on Sunday, Angel's grandparents decided to switch off her life support machine after doctors were unable to control swelling to the child's brain.

Angel has been reunited with her parents, Reuters quoted her extended family as saying in a statement released at her grandfather's request.

We want to thank God for all of you and for your thoughts and prayers. God will bring you and all of us out of this. That is what it will take. All should look to God, the family said.

Angel's death brings the death toll in Indiana from Friday's tornadoes to 13. In all, 39 people were killed across the U.S. Midwest and Southeast.

The toll is expected to rise as rescuers, police and soldiers from National Guard units begin to pick through the wreckage.

At least 30 tornadoes cut a path of destruction from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico destroying homes, schools and a prison, according to reports.

Kentucky suffered the highest number of deaths of any state, with 21, followed by neighboring Indiana's 13, three in Ohio and one each in Alabama and Georgia.

Rescuers are still going door to door in rural areas to rule out more victims, as residents struggled to communicate with power lines, phone lines and mobile-phone signals all down across the affected areas.

According to reports, word-of-mouth replaced text messages, the Internet and phone calls as people struggled to find out what had happened to loved ones or neighbors.

It's horrible. It's things you take for granted that aren't there anymore, Jack Cleveland, 50, a Census Bureau worker from Henryville, Ind., told the Associated Press.

Randy Mattingly, a 24-year-old mechanic, said he and his Henryville neighbors passed on information by word-of-mouth to make sure people were OK: It was like, 'Hey, did you talk to this guy?'

In Indiana, about 2,800 homes were without power, down from 8,000 in the hours after the storms. But in some hard-hit areas, like Henryville, a substation and transmission lines need to be rebuilt, and that could take up to a week, the AP reported.

In a bid to help residents cell phone companies were setting up mobile charging hotspots and installing portable masts to boost signals.