A person died in a suspected weather-related house explosion in Indiana and a 4-year-old boy was killed when a tree fell on his home as furious storms moved through the Midwest on Tuesday, bringing winds that gusted more than 80 mph, officials said.
Both deaths occurred in Indiana. The house explosion and a subsequent fire occurred at around 12:20 p.m. in Portage, and the child died when a tree fell on his bedroom in Jennings County at around 3:25 p.m., according to police.
“Contributions are probably wind and the storms that came through this county earlier today,” Jennings County Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Cody Low said of the circumstances of the child’s death in Geneva Township.
In Portage, a city around 30 miles southeast of Chicago, firefighters and other responders were delayed by the amount of storm damage and the number of trees blocking roads, officials there 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 EF1 tornadoes, it said.
Over 1 million electricity customers across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky 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.”
In another part of Ohio, a lightning strike at Grafton Correctional Institution as inmates returned from a meal sent 16 people to outside hospitals for treatment — including one who was transported by medical helicopter, the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said.
No deaths had been reported Tuesday night, but officials were monitoring the situation, a spokesperson for the department said.
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 impassable Tuesday.
Video taken in the Portage area showed a trailer on a train, which did not appear to be moving, getting 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 either to have been struck by lightning or to have ignited after power lines were blown into it.
McKee said she heard a “big boom, bang, like we’ve never heard before — it was so loud.” An electricity transformer had blown off 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 a proclamation declaring an emergency in Perry and Muskingum counties, which are east and southeast of Columbus, because of flooding. His office said there have been some water rescues and people evacuated from their homes.
