Multiple tornadoes and storms wreak havoc on Sullivan, Indiana, and the Little Rock, Illinois, area Thursday through Sunday afternoon
Devastating storms and tornadoes scraped the South and Midwest Friday into early Saturday, killing at least five people, injuring dozens more, trapping others in their homes, and damaging businesses and critical infrastructure – with the threat of more severe weather looming into Saturday afternoon.
Two people were killed in Indiana by a storm that damaged homes and a volunteer fire department, near Sullivan, a 95-mile drive southwest of Indianapolis. Matt Ames said.
When they got the tornado alert and rushed to her daughter’s home across the yard in Hohenwald, they went to the RV first, before they got to the car. The tornado hit minutes later.
More than two dozen tornadoes were reported in Illinois, Iowa, Tennessee, Wisconsin and a couple in Mississippi according to preliminary information.
William Williams, who told CNN affiliate KATV he’s an employee at a Kroger supermarket in Little Rock, said he’s “thankful to be alive” after a tornado rolled near the area while he was working Friday afternoon. He’d taken shelter inside the store, and went outside afterward to see people injured, including a woman he said had a severe leg injury.
Vehicles flying across the air are unbelievable, the mayor said. If the people were not at their homes, it would have been a massacre.
The tornado that blew through Wynne, Arkansas, cut the town in two, as it traveled from north to south and then west.
A tornado and hail wreaked havoc in Illinois as part of a series of storms. In Belvidere, one person died and 28 were injured when the roof of a theater caved in.
Tornadoes still could happen in southeastern Indiana, western Ohio and northern Kentucky on Saturday through 5 a.m. ET, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The area, which includes the cities of Dayton and Cincinnati, was under a tornado watch that warned of wind gusts up to 70 mph along with large hail.
On Friday, large hail proved to be a dangerous when it bombarded northern Illinois, cracking and denting cars’ windshields, according to a Facebook post from the Fulton County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency.
About 78 miles southeast of there, several businesses were “basically destroyed,” Sheriff Jack Campbell told CNN, and up to 40 homes were damaged around Sherman, less than 10 miles north of Springfield.
A lot of homes and businesses in Indiana and other states were without power early Saturday as a result of the storm.
The governors of Indiana, Iowa, Illinois and Arkansas all announced emergency or disaster declarations in their states to help free up immediate assistance for impacted counties.
A tornado in Adamsville, Mississippi, killed four in three hours after a storm in McNairy County, Missouri, and one in Memphis, Arkansas
The Adamsville Police Department on social media said that the damage done to the community last night was “catastrophic”.
In the aftermath of a tornado, the police department said the city was “impassable”. According to police, homes were battered, power lines were lost and search and rescue teams were called in.
In Little Rock, at least one person was dead and more than two dozen were hospitalized. The Little Rock Police Department has reported that homes, apartment complexes and storefronts were damaged.
The Belvidere fire chief told the Associated Press that at least 260 people were at the venue to see a heavy metal concert.
“Our worst fears became a reality earlier when we learned that members of our community have lost their lives,” Sullivan County Sheriff Jason Bobbitt said on Saturday morning.
At least one person has died and four others were injured in Pontotoc County in northern Mississippi due to severe weather, according to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
Devastated communities across the South and Midwest were picking up the pieces and digging through debris Sunday after ferocious storms and tornadoes leveled neighborhoods and left at least 22 people dead.
There were at least seven people killed when two back-to-back storms hit McNairy County, Tennessee.
In nearby McNairy County, where multiple deaths have been reported, sheriff Buck said the death toll might have been higher if residents had not ignored warnings to seek shelter.
Deaths were reported across several states, including four people who were killed in Illinois; three people who died in Sullivan, Indiana; and four in Wynne, Arkansas.
In addition to leaving trails of destruction across several states, storms have also knocked out power to battered communities, including over 30,000 customers affected by outages in Arkansas, according to poweroutage.us.
“I don’t know how to put it into words. It was devastating. When you see it on TV it is very similar to seeing it in person.
CNN has provided drone footage of some of the houses in Wynne that were completely knocked into piles of wood while other had their roofs ripped off, exposing their interiors to storm debris.
We made her and the children go into the bathtub because it is the safest place to be. And we just all hunkered down because all the doors blew out. Double doors in the front, double doors in the back, all the glass in the windows. It all blew out at once,” Pieterick said.
The powers of mother nature can never be underestimated, even if the devastation had not been so devastating as predicted by Hawking radiation
“Had they not, looking at the devastation that we had, our death toll could have been in the hundreds,” Buck said. “The power of mother nature is something not to be underestimated,” he added.