A person died in a suspected house explosion in Indiana as furious storms moved through the Midwest on Tuesday, bringing at least two tornadoes to Illinois and wind that overturned a train car elsewhere, officials said.
The person in Indiana died during a blast and fire in Portage, a city around 30 miles southeast of Chicago, with firefighters delayed by the large damage and debris from the storm, police said.
The weather is suspected to have played a role in the fire, which occurred around 12:20 p.m., but the cause is still under investigation, police said.
Police Capt. Rob Maynard, who said at a news conference that he has lived in Portage for 50 years, called the storms “probably the most severe weather event that any of us here can remember.”
Fire Chief Chris Crail said at the news conference, “When this call came in, everything was breaking free.” Finding a path to the location with the number of trees and power lines down was difficult, he said.
Police Chief Mike Candiano said there were so many trees blocking roads that several officers parked a mile away from the home and ran toward it to try to respond. “It seemed that every road had a tree down,” he said.
In Illinois, there were two confirmed tornadoes near Chicago, the National Weather Service said: one in southern Cook County and a second in eastern Will County. Both caused damage consistent with EF-1 tornadoes, it said.
Over 1 million electricity customers across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee were without power Tuesday evening, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us. Most of them were in Ohio and Indiana, according to the site.
Utility provider AEP said the Columbus, Ohio, area experienced gusts of more than 80 mph and trees falling on power lines. It said it had more than 2,000 workers trying to restore electricity, including crews from other states.
Response teams have witnessed “disaster-like conditions” in Columbus, Ohio’s most populated city, Mayor Andrew Ginther said at a news conference after a first round of storms hit Tuesday morning.
Ginther said power could be out for days.
“I want to encourage everybody to plan on a very different next couple of days and rest of the week,” Ginther said. “Things are not going to be fully restored and back to normal later today or tomorrow, the day after that.”
The weather service office serving Chicago and the greater region warned Tuesday of possible 100 mph winds and urged people in Porter County, where Portage is, to seek shelter immediately.
Portage Mayor Austin Bonta signed a declaration of emergency and said roads were impassible Tuesday.
Video taken in the Portage area showed a trailer on a train, which did not appear to be moving, get pushed over by the wind as material described as being from a roof blew all around.
In Frankfort, Illinois, the home where Tammy McKee lives with her elderly mother was a total loss after what is suspected to be a weather-related fire Tuesday.
Fire officials at the scene said the home is believed to have either been struck by lightning or that it ignited after power lines were blown into it.
McKee, 55, said she heard a “big boom, bang, like we’ve never heard before — it was so loud.” An electricity transformer had blown off from a pole and landed on the roof, she said.
At first unaware of the fire, McKee smelled smoke — and then there was a lot of it.
“I was like, ‘We’ve got to go,’” McKee said.
A frontal boundary moving across the north-central U.S. created a risk for damaging thunderstorms in parts of the Midwest and the Ohio Valley, the weather service said in a forecast earlier Tuesday.
In Ohio, Gov. Mark DeWine signed an proclamation declaring an emergency in Perry and Muskingum counties, which are east and southeast of Columbus, due to flooding. His office said there have been some water rescues and people evacuated from their homes.
