Major storms that whipped up tornadoes in parts of Illinois and Indiana on Tuesday leveled homes, downed trees and power lines, and overwhelmed a 911 center south of Chicago with emergency calls, according to officials.
“Please do not come here. Do not try to help right now,” Newton County Sheriff Shannon Cothran said in a video update in front of what looked to be a destroyed home in the small northwestern Indiana community of Lake Village.
Multiple homes in the community were destroyed in an apparent tornado, and Indiana State Police Cpl. Eric Rot said people had been injured. He wasn’t able to provide an exact number or their conditions.
Severe storms dumping rain and hail in parts of the Midwest were threatening to bring intense tornadoes, damaging winds and very large hail from the southern Plains to the southern Great Lakes, according to the National Weather Service. States from Oklahoma to Michigan were under tornado watches.
Several tornadoes formed across northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana, but the exact number won’t be available until officials conduct damage surveys, said Andrew Lyons, a meteorologist with the weather service Storm Prediction Center.
He described this as a fairly typical early spring strong storm system. It is expected to continue to move east across parts of the mid-Atlantic and East Coast Wednesday, likely bringing more severe weather, he said.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said in a post on the social platform X that he’d been briefed on the storm and tornado damage.
“Keeping in our thoughts all Illinoisans impacted by the severe weather — we’ll be here to help them recover,” he said.
A tornado struck down near the Kankakee fairgrounds, about 57 miles (92 kilometers) south of Chicago, before traveling northeast into Aroma Park, where it caused extensive damage, according to the Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office. No injuries have been reported.
“I want to remind area residents to check on their neighbors and loved ones but to avoid unnecessary travel, if at all possible,” Kankakee County Sheriff Mike Downey said in a statement.
In video shared on social media, the twister is seen ripping across a field of farmland near an airport while vehicles lined the road.
More than 2 million Americans were at a moderate risk of severe weather in Illinois and Indiana. Nearly 22 million were at a slightly lesser risk in a zone that includes Chicago, Fort Worth, Texas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
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Associated Press journalist Hannah Schoenbaum contributed from Salt Lake City.