Tornadoes claim at least 7 in US Midwest
Print Edition
Dozens of tornadoes swept across the US Midwest in a rare November blast of warm-weather storms, leaving at least seven people dead and unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighborhoods, flipped over cars and uprooted trees.
An elderly man and his sister were killed when a tornado hit their home in rural southern Illinois on Sunday. Four other people were killed in the state, the hardest hit by the tornados, said Patti Thompson of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. She did not provide details.
The governor of Illinois, Pat Quinn, declared seven counties disaster areas.
Jackson County Sheriff Steven Rand said 21-year-old Ryan Allan Rickman died when his vehicle was crushed by a fallen tree on Sunday evening in Michigan.
With communications difficult and many roads impassable, it remained unclear how many people were killed or hurt by the unusually strong late-season tornadoes.
Between 250 and 500 homes were either damaged or destroyed in the town of Washington, Mayor Gary Manier said yesterday. He said it wasn’t clear when residents would be allowed to return.
“Everybody’s without power, but some people are without everything,” Manier said in the parking lot of a destroyed auto parts store and near a row of flattened homes.
“How people survived is beyond me,” he said.
The tornado cut a path from one side of the town of 16,000 people to the other, knocking down power lines uprooting trees and rupturing gas lines, State Trooper Dustin Pierce said.
Local official Tyler Gee told WLS-TV that as he walked through neighborhoods immediately after the tornado struck, he “couldn’t even tell what street I was on.”
“Just completely flattened — some of the neighborhoods here in town, hundreds of homes.”
At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, spokeswoman Amy Paul said 37 patients had been treated, eight with injuries ranging from broken bones to head injuries that were serious enough to be admitted. Another hospital, Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, treated more than a dozen people, but officials there said none were seriously injured.
As the rain and high winds slammed into the Chicago area, officials cleared a professional sports stadium and cleared teams off the field for a couple of hours.
Just how many tornadoes hit was unclear. According to the National Weather Service’s website, a total of 65 tornadoes struck, most of them in Illinois. But meteorologist Matt Friedlein said the total might fall because emergency workers, tornado spotters and others often report the same tornado.
Matt Friedlein, a weather service meteorologist, said that such strong storms are rare this late in the year because there usually isn’t enough heat from the sun to sustain the thunderstorms.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
