Three Killed, Dozens Injured After Reports of Tornadoes in US Midwest
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – At least three people were killed and dozens were injured after a parade of severe weather marched through Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio in the United States overnight, spinning off at least six devastating tornadoes, officials said.
The three deaths occurred near Indian Lake, a reservoir in Ohio that becomes a bustling resort area in the summer, The New York Times reported.
Two women, aged 81 and 70, were found dead in a mobile home park on March 14, and the body of a 59-year-old man was found in a mobile home in Orchard Island early on March 15, said Dr John O’Connor, the Logan County coroner.
All three people died from “blunt force trauma”, the coroner said.
Around two dozen others from the area, about 112km north-west of Columbus, were treated for broken bones and other wounds, said Laura Miller, a spokeswoman for Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine, Ohio.
About half of those were still in the emergency room on March 15, she added.
Meteorologists were still surveying the damage on March 15 to establish the number and strength of the tornadoes in the outbreak. The National Weather Service office in Wilmington, Ohio, had confirmed five in the state by early afternoon.
In eastern Indiana, the towns of Winchester in Randolph County and Selma in Delaware County were badly hit by at least one tornado, which razed buildings and tore roofs off homes.
“It sounded like a ripping from the heavens. It was really scary,” said Marcy Kindred, 25, who huddled in a bathroom with her 84-year-old grandmother on March 14 in Winchester.
After the storm passed, Kindred found she could look at the sky through her roof.
The homeland security emergency management office in Randolph County said in a statement early on March 15 that 38 people had been injured, with 12 taken to hospitals.
In Ohio and Indiana, search and rescue crews were still checking houses on March 15 morning, spray-painting Xs outside homes where they had looked. But the overall death toll had not risen as of midday, as some had feared.
In south-eastern Indiana, a tornado damaged at least 29 homes, said Matt True, the director of the emergency management agency in Jefferson County. Meteorologists believe this same tornado bounced across the Ohio River and left a trail of destruction in Kentucky.
Andrew Stark, the emergency management director from Kentucky’s Trimble County, said that 20 to 30 homes had been severely damaged there, with some roofs shorn off and walls destroyed.
