CLARK COUNTY, Indiana — (DMN) – The Indiana State Police say that 13 people have died in today’s tornado outbreak. Three deaths were confirmed Scott County, according to the state Department of Homeland Security, and four in Jefferson County, according to DHS and local police, AP said. Indiana State Police Versailles post confirmed two more deaths in Ripley County, in the town of Holton. Another four people were found dead in a home in Washington County, Sheriff Claude Combs told WDRB in Louisville.
Gov. Mitch Daniels will tour the storm-ravaged areas of Southern Indiana on Saturday morning, his office confirmed today. The governor expressed his concern for the victims of the tornadoes in a prepared statement. “Once again Mother Nature has dealt harshly with Indiana,” Daniels said. “Our every thought is with those we’ve lost and those who have suffered. We’ve learned so much and improved so much in disaster preparedness, warning systems and responder communications but still we are no match for Mother Nature at her worst. “We’re hopeful that we know the full extent of the damage but it will be tomorrow before we can give a final report with any confidence.”
Early reports show the heaviest damage from the storm to be concentrated in southeastern Indiana, including substantial damage in Henryville and Marysville in Clark County and New Pekin in Washington county, according to a statement from the State of Indiana Joint Information Center. The Indiana Department of Homeland Security’s Incident Management Team is deploying deploying to Southern Indiana to assist local emergency management teams in coordinating response efforts. Indiana Task Force One, an emergency response team comprised of Hoosier first responders, also is deploying to the area to assist with search-and-rescue efforts. State officials are advising that residents of the affected areas follow the instructions of local emergency-response workers and that other Hoosiers avoid traveling to the affected areas.
A sheriff’s official says at least one town of about 1,900 people is “completely gone.” The twisters tossed debris onto roadways across the wide area north of Louisville, Ky., making it difficult for rescue workers and others to get to communities damaged by a line of powerful storms that wreaked havoc in several states. Initial reports from towns such as Marysville and Henryville were ones of devastation. “Marysville is completely gone,” Clark County Sheriff’s Maj. Chuck Adams told The Associated Press. He was unable to offer many other details about the damage there.
State Joint Information Center spokesman Jet Quillen said at least three people died in Jefferson County and three more were killed in Scott County.
Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Shelly Jones says houses are missing near the unincorporated town of Chelsea, about 30 miles north of Louisville, Ky. Two people also were killed in the Ripley County community of Holton, including a man from Mexico who was visiting friends, said Indiana State Police Sgt. Noel Houze Jr. Six other people were taken to the hospital with serious injuries, including an elderly couple whose injuries were life-threatening, Houze said. Few recognizable structures remained in Henryville, a few miles to the west, where a high school was destroyed and the second floor ripped off an adjacent middle school. Sara Reschar of West Clark Community Schools said only a handful of students were in the building when the tornado struck. The rest had been sent home for the day. “Thank God, or they all would have been gone,” she said.
Adams told WLKY in Louisville that the only injuries at the school were minor cuts. “Everybody’s been evacuated,” he said tonight. Ernie Hall, 68, weathered the tornado inside his tiny home near the high school. Hall says he saw the twister coming down the road toward his house, whipping up debris in its path. “There was no mistaking what it was,” Hall said. Images from WLKY showed a mangled school bus protruding from the side of a one-story Henryville building where it appeared to have been tossed. Aerial views showed dozens of overturned semis strewn around the smashed remains of a truck stop.
The rural town about 45 miles north of Louisville is known as the home of Indiana’s oldest state forest and as the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder Colonel Harlan Sanders. Chris Dickey, a district chief with the New Washington Fire Department, said that five people were injured in Marysville, where bent utility poles and downed trees littered the community. Dickey said the injuries ranged from facial cuts to one serious injury he didn’t describe. That person was taken to a hospital in Louisville, he said. “We’re still very much in the mode of rendering assistance at this point,” said Indiana State Police Capt. Dave Bursten.
High school boys basketball sectionals tonight at Seymour, Salem, South Ripley, Paoli, South Decatur, Orleans and Borden were postponed after the storms. Games were tentatively rescheduled for Saturday. The twisters were part of a powerful string of storms stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late tonight for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma said the massive band of storms was putting 10 million people in several states at high risk of dangerous weather. “Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center,” forecaster Corey Mead said. “This is one of those days.”
Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed temporarily because of debris on the runways, but one of three runways had reopened by late afternoon. A fire station was flattened and several barns were toppled in northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from the badly damaged Indiana towns. The outbreak was also causing problems in states to south, including Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were damaged. It comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South. At least 20 homes were ripped off their foundation and eight people were injured in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area. To the east in Cleveland, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither was hurt.
“It just hit all at once,” said Blaine Lawson, 76. “Didn’t have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us.” Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution, and several Kentucky universities were closed. The Huntsville, Ala., mayor said students in area schools sheltered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning. “Most of the children were in schools so they were in the hallways so it worked out very well,” said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle. Five people were taken to area hospitals, and several houses were leveled.
An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, but none of the facility’s approximately 2,100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure. “It was reported you could see the sky through the roof of one of them,” Corbett said. For residents and emergency officials across the state, tornado precautions and cleanup are part of a sadly familiar routine. A tornado outbreak last April killed about 250 people around the state, with the worst damage in Tuscaloosa to the south.
The Storm Prediction Center’s Mead said a powerful storm system was interacting with humid, unstable air that was streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico. “The environment just becomes more unstable and provides the fuel for the thunderstorms,” Mead said. Schools sent students home early or canceled classes entirely in states including Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana. In Alabama alone, more than 20 school systems dismissed classes early Friday. The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and several other colleges in the state also canceled classes. In one subdivision in in Athens, Ala., damage was visible on 10 homes. Homeowner Bill Adams watched as two men ripped shingles off the roof of a house he rents out, and he fretted about predictions that more storms would pass through. “Hopefully they can at least get a tarp on it before it starts again,” he said.
Not far away, the damage was much worse for retired high school band director Stanley Nelson. Winds peeled off his garage door and about a third of his roof, making rafters and boxes in his attic visible from the street. “It’s like it just exploded,” he said.
Storm Predator shows two well defined hooks of large tornadoes over Southern Indiana this afternoon. (DMNEWSI)
Without digital technology, TITAN Doppler Radar, StormPredator Tracking, the National Weather Service and ground sources in Southern Indiana it would have been impossible to cover today’s events. The National Weather Service issued warnings yesterday, well in advance of today’s super-outbreak of tornadoes along the Ohio River Valley and mid-south but still, five people are known to have died in Indiana and it’s a toll, that in all honesty, will probably go up. I know Southern Indiana. It’s where I grew up. I remember well the super-outbreak of 1974 that destroyed Brandenburg, Kentucky and Madison, Indiana and I won’t soon forget the super-outbreak of 2012 that ripped through Borden and Henryville, Indiana and wiped a town called Marysville from the map.
Those of us in the news business catch hell from time to time for what seems like needless overreacting to potential disaster. I only wish we had been wrong today but with the technology what it is, there was plenty of warning. The powerful severe storm system moved across the United States on Friday, with a slew of tornadoes from Alabama to Indiana contributing to at least five deaths and threatening even more destruction as the day wore on. National Weather Service meteorologist John Gordon reported Friday afternoon the agency has about “half a dozen reports of tornadoes on the ground,” as well as reports of “significant damage” — stressing all the while that the worst may still be to come. “This is an enormous outbreak that’s going on right now across Kentucky and the South,” Gordon said. “It’s crazy. It’s just nuts right here.”
Southern Indiana was particularly hard hit, with Indiana Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson saying three had died in Jefferson County as a result. In addition, Emergency Management Director Leslie Cavanaugh of Clark County — which has about 110,000 people — reported one death. An earlier fatality in the county was reported by Sheriff’s Department Maj. Chuck Adams. The coroner was called in to determine a cause of death. “We’ve got total devastation in the north-central part of the county (and) widespread damage from the west to the east,” added Adams. “We are inundated with calls.”
Cavanaugh also said that the local high school, Henryville Junior-Senior High School, had been “demolished.” According to Sara Reschar, an administrative assistant for the West Clark Community Schools, “students were already out of the school when the storm hit” — having been dismissed about 15 minutes earlier. Aerial footage from CNN affiliate WLKY showed structures torn to shreds and large swaths of trees knocked down in Henryville, about 20 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. Other aerial images showed similar devastation in St. Paul, Indiana. Several officials — including Jeffersonville, Indiana, Mayor Mike Moore and U.S. Sen. Dan Coats — indicated that the town of Marysville suffered especially significant damage.
The devastation was caused by a potent and widespread system that has spawned several tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service — including two twisters that touched down in northeast Alabama and at least one in Indiana’s Posey County at approximately 1:43 p.m. CT (2:43 p.m. ET). About four hours later, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels said crews “are racing the nightfall” to assess the damage and help those in need. “I am constantly amazed by both the unpredictability and the ferocity that Mother Nature can unleash, when she chooses to,” Daniels said of the severe weather. His counterpart in Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear, on Friday declared a statewide emergency to facilitate local authorities’ access to state resources. The governor said there are fears there will be multiple fatalities in the state. “The storm system hasn’t cleared Kentucky yet, but we obviously have reports of some heavy damage,” Beshear told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Shawn Harley, from the National Weather Service, confirmed that people were trapped in damaged buildings after a large tornado struck the small town of West Liberty in eastern Kentucky. There was no immediate word on casualties as a result. In Tennessee, severe weather was responsible for critical injuries of as many as eight people in the cities of Harrison and Oolteweh, officials there said. The storm brought golf-ball-size hail, strong winds and rain into the two northeast Alabama counties before continuing on a northeastward path into Tennessee.
Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Jeremy Heidt said there were reports of possible tornado touchdowns in nine counties total. Damage assessment teams are “taking cover until the storms pass,” though it is known that about 1,000 gallons of petroleum fuel spilled at a marina that was affected in the eastern part of the state. “It’s going to be a long night,” Heidt said. Between 40 and 50 homes in Hamilton County, Tennessee, have “significant damage that we know about,” the county’s Chief of Emergency Management Bill Tittle told CNN. Reporting from that area near Chattanooga, CNN’s Rob Marciano observed a continuous stretch of damage about 200 yards wide that ripped what had been brick-and-mortar homes down to their foundations.
Tittle said that there are 24 reported injuries and, while none of them appears to be life-threatening, he acknowledged that “we have not reached all the homes.” “We obviously have lots of debris, homes with roof damage, streets that are impassable that we have crews cutting down trees with chainsaws in order to get emergency vehicles through, and as of now our crews are just going door-to-door on foot,” said Amy Maxwell, Hamilton County, Tennessee, emergency management spokeswoman. Maxwell later said six to 10 people were at local hospitals after suffering injuries, and a triage area was set up at Ooltewah High School to treat patients on the scene. Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said a touchdown of a tornado had been confirmed, though he expressed optimism that sound preparation and safety measures appeared thus far to prevent any deaths. “We’re just working diligently at this hour to try to make sure that everyone is accounted for,” Coppinger told CNN. “And hopefully we’ll be able to escape (without fatalities).”
Meanwhile, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said there have been seven injuries and about 40 homes destroyed but no fatalities after two tornadoes touched down in his state Friday morning. “The April 27 tornado and the track of the two this morning were exactly the same,” Bentley told CNN, referring to last year’s twisters that left at least 238 dead. Both Buckhorn High School in Madison County and the Limestone County Correctional Facility in an adjacent Alabama county were hit Friday. There was also widespread damage in Madison County, the National Weather Service said, and some injuries were reported, according to a local ambulance service.
The Madison County Emergency Management Agency confirmed that a rain-wrapped tornado was spotted near the Harvest area, just northwest of Huntsville, which itself was hit hard by a tornado last year. “The key thing that let me know it was serious was the loud wind,” said Hovet Dixon of Harvey, Alabama. “It almost seemed like it was trying to lift my roof off.” The warden for the Limestone Correctional Facility, Dorothy Goode, said the prison was hit by the storm. All prisoners — the facility holds about 2,200 — were accounted for, she said. Storms are expected to begin to weaken during the late evening as they move east toward the Appalachians. The severe weather threat should diminish overnight Friday into Saturday morning, Morris said. These tornadoes follow an earlier outbreak that began Tuesday night and left 13 dead across Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee and battered parts of Kentucky.
DMNEWSI Titan Doppler Radar picked up the large tornado hooks over Southern Indiana this afternoon.
HENRYVILLE, Indiana — (DMN) – Yesterday, the National Severe Storms Center issued an ominous warning for severe weather across the mid-south, Ohio and Tennessee River Valley’s that had a similar set-up as the Super Tornado Outbreak of 1974 and Mother Nature delivered. Shortly afternoon, forecasters and chasers began observing several long tracking tornadoes near Evansville, Indiana that pummeled the Ohio River Valley of Southern Indiana smashing the town of Henryville and virtually wiping tiny Maryville from the map.
Tornadoes have left widespread damage in Southern Indiana and a sheriff’s official says at least one town of about 1,900 people is “completely gone.” Indiana Department of Homeland Security Spokesman John Erickson confirmed three deaths in Jefferson County. Gov. Mitch Daniels plans to travel to Southern Indiana early Saturday morning to survey areas damaged by today’s storms, according to a news release from spokeswoman Jane Jankowski. Officials say they’ve had difficulty confirming reports due to downed power and telephone lines. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Shelly Jones says houses are missing near the unincorporated town of Chelsea, about 30 miles north of Louisville, Ky.
National Weather Service coordinator Bill Whitlock there’s “extreme damage” in the area of Henryville, a town of about 3,000 people just north of the Kentucky border. Destruction can be seen for miles and a school district spokeswoman says heavy damage has been reported at Henryville High school. Clark County Sheriff’s Department Maj. Chuck Adams says the nearby town of Marysville is “completely gone.” Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed numerous wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video shot by WLKY in Louisville, Ky., also shows a high school with much of its roof torn off and tractor-trailers tossed on their side at a truck stop.
The rural town about 45 miles north of Louisville is known as the home of Indiana’s oldest state forest and as the birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder Colonel Harlan Sanders. To the northeast, Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed briefly because of debris on the runways. By late afternoon, one of three runways had reopened. The powerful storms were part of a system that stretched from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, flattened buildings in several states and bred anxiety across a wide swath of the country in the second powerful tornado outbreak this week.
Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma said tornado threats as serious as Friday’s only happen several times a year. “Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center,” forecaster Corey Mead said. “This is one of those days.” The powerful storm system was also causing problems in states far to the south, including Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were also damaged. The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday. The outbreak comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.
At least 20 homes were badly damaged and six people were hospitalized in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area. To the east in Cleveland, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither were hurt. “It just hit all at once,” said Blaine Lawson, 76. “Didn’t have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us.”
Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution, and several Kentucky universities were closed. The Huntsville, Ala., mayor said students in area schools sheltered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning. “Most of the children were in schools so they were in the hallways so it worked out very well,” said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle. Five people were taken to area hospitals, and several houses were leveled.
An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, but none of the facility’s approximately 2,100 inmates escaped. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure. “It was reported you could see the sky through the roof of one of them,” Corbett said. For residents and emergency officials across the state, tornado precautions and cleanup are part of a sadly familiar routine. A tornado outbreak last April killed about 250 people around the state, with the worst damage in Tuscaloosa to the south.
Forecasters warned of severe thunderstorms with the threat of tornadoes crossing a region from southern Ohio through much of Kentucky and Tennessee. By early Friday afternoon, tornado watches covered parts of those states along with Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. The Storm Prediction Center’s Mead said a powerful storm system was interacting with humid, unstable air that was streaming north from the Gulf of Mexico. “The environment just becomes more unstable and provides the fuel for the thunderstorms,” Mead said. Schools sent students home early or cancelled classes entirely in states including Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky and Indiana. In Alabama alone, more than 20 school systems dismissed classes early Friday. The University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and several other colleges in the state also canceled classes.
At least 10 homes were damaged in one subdivision in Athens, Ala. Homeowner Bill Adams watched as two men ripped shingles off the roof of a house he rents out, and he fretted about predictions that more storms would pass through. “Hopefully they can at least get a tarp on it before it starts again,” he said. Not far away, the damage was much worse for retired high school band director Stanley Nelson. Winds peeled off his garage door and about a third of his roof, making rafters and boxes in his attic visible from the street. “It’s like it just exploded,” he said.
EDITORS NOTE: Due to severe weather outbreak across Ohio and Tennessee River Valley’s, DMN Evening News will not be posted tonight.
HENRYVILLE, Indiana — (DMN) – Multiple long tracking tornadoes ripped up the Ohio River Valley this afternoon from Evansville, Indiana to the Ohio State line sparing some areas a devastating others. Emergency workers and residents looking for loved ones were streaming by the Henryville, Indiana school complex on Friday afternoon after at least one tornado tore through Clark County. The school’s roof has been torn off, segments of the wall have been knocked down and windows are blown out. At least half a dozen vehicles in the school’s parking lot have also been crushed by falling debris. A house near the school had its roof blown in.
Jerry Goodin, a spokesman for Indiana State Police, said that to his knowledge all of the students have been accounted for and none were injured. He said many other injuries have been reported around town. He said students were being taken to the town’s community center so that their families could pick them up. He said injured adults were being treated at the St. Francis Catholic Church in town. The storms killed at least four people and caused extensive property damage in Southern Indiana.
Authorities said three people were killed in Jefferson County, Ind., and one near Henryville, in Clark County. The deaths occurred in Chelsea, the Madison mayor said. Numerous injuries were reported in Clark County, where Henryville High School sustained extensive damage. The death was on an outlying road and did not occur at the high school, officials said. Les Kavanaugh, Clark County’s EMS director, said students had been kept at the high school as the storms approached. He had no word on injuries.
Kavanaugh said Marysville, also in Clark County, suffered significant damage, as did Pekin, according to an Indiana State Police dispatcher. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Shelly Jones said houses are missing near the unincorporated town of Chelsea, about 30 miles north of Louisville. Southern Indiana was particularly hard hit, with Indiana Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson saying three had died in Jefferson County as a result.
Aerial footage from CNN affiliate WLKY showed structures seemingly torn to shred and large swaths of trees knocked down in Henryville, about 20 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. Other overhead shots showed similar devastation in St. Paul, Indiana. And Jeffersonville, Indiana, Mayor Mike Moore said he’d heard from a county police officer that the town of Marysville is “gone.” This all is because of a potent and widespread system that has spawned several tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service — including at least one in Indiana’s Posey County at approximately 1:43 p.m. CT (2:43 p.m. ET), plus two twisters that touched down in northeast Alabama.
Tracking tornado near Borden Indiana: Chad Hinton shared his video tracking a tornado from along Indiana 60 about 60 miles outside Borden, Indiana. (Courtesy Chad Hinton)
In Tennessee, severe weather was responsible for critical injuries of as many as eight people in the cities of Harrison and Oolteweh, officials there said. The storm brought golf-ball-size hail, strong winds and rain into the two northeast Alabama counties before continuing on a northeastward path into Tennessee. Between 40 and 50 homes in Hamilton County, Tennessee, have “significant damage that we know about,” the county’s Chief of Emergency Management Bill Tittle told CNN. Reporting from that area near Chattanooga, CNN’s Rob Marciano observed a continuous stretch of damage about 200 yards wide that ripped what had been brick and mortar homes down to their foundations.
Tittle said that there are 24 reported injuries and, while none of those appear to be life-threatening, he acknowledged that “we have not reached all the homes.” “We obviously have lots of debris, homes with roof damage, streets that are impassable that we have crews cutting down trees with chainsaws in order to get emergency vehicles through, and as of now our crews are just going door-to-door on foot,” said Amy Maxwell, Hamilton County, Tennessee, emergency management spokeswoman.
Maxwell later said six to 10 people were at local hospitals after suffering injuries, and a triage area was set up at Ooltewah High School to treat patients on the scene. Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger said a touchdown of a tornado had been confirmed, though he expressed optimism that sound preparation and safety measures appeared thus far to prevent any deaths. “We’re just working diligently at this hour to try to make sure that everyone is accounted for,” Coppinger told CNN. “And hopefully we’ll be able to escape (without fatalities).” Meanwhile, there were no immediate reports of injuries at either Buckhorn High School in Madison County or the Limestone County Correctional Facility in an adjacent county, both in Alabama. But there was widespread damage in Madison County, the National Weather Service said, and some injuries were reported, according to a local ambulance service.
The Madison County Emergency Management Agency confirmed that a rain-wrapped tornado was spotted near the Harvest area, just northwest of Huntsville, which itself was hit hard by a tornado last year. “The key thing that let me know it was serious was the loud wind,” said Hovet Dixon of Harvey, Alabama. “It almost seemed like it was trying to lift my roof off.” The scene after the storm passed in the areas where the apparent tornadoes touched down looked similar to what parts of the Midwest and South suffered earlier this week, with damaged homes and downed power lines. Thousands were without power.
The warden for the Limestone Correctional Facility, Dorothy Goode, said the prison was hit by the storm. All prisoners — the facility holds about 2,200 — were accounted for, she said. These were the first reported twisters from a storm system that threatened the already hard-hit Midwest and South. Forecasters said the areas most at risk for twisters on Friday were southern Indiana, southern Ohio, most of Kentucky, central Tennessee, northeastern Mississippi and northwestern Alabama. Storms were expected to proliferate during the afternoon, with the most likely window for tornadoes between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. ET, according to CNN meteorologist Sean Morris.
There is the potential for widespread damaging wind gusts, large hail and violent tornadoes in some areas. Storms are expected to begin to weaken during the late evening as they move east toward the Appalachians. The severe weather threat should diminish overnight Friday into Saturday morning, Morris said. These tornadoes follow an earlier outbreak that began Tuesday night and left 13 dead across Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Tennessee and battered parts of Kentucky.
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Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Shelly Jones says houses are missing near the unincorporated town of Chelsea, about 30 miles north of Louisville, Ky. Two people also were killed in the Ripley County community of Holton, including a man from Mexico who was visiting friends, said Indiana State Police Sgt. Noel Houze Jr. Six other people were taken to the hospital with serious injuries, including an elderly couple whose injuries were life-threatening, Houze said. Few recognizable structures remained in Henryville, a few miles to the west, where a high school was destroyed and the second floor ripped off an adjacent middle school. Sara Reschar of West Clark Community Schools said only a handful of students were in the building when the tornado struck. The rest had been sent home for the day. “Thank God, or they all would have been gone,” she said.
High school boys basketball sectionals tonight at Seymour, Salem, South Ripley, Paoli, South Decatur, Orleans and Borden were postponed after the storms. Games were tentatively rescheduled for Saturday. The twisters were part of a powerful string of storms stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late tonight for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma said the massive band of storms was putting 10 million people in several states at high risk of dangerous weather. “Maybe five times a year we issue what is kind of the highest risk level for us at the Storm Prediction Center,” forecaster Corey Mead said. “This is one of those days.”
