Violent storms sweep across U.S. Midwest, killing 8

WASHINGTON, Ill. – As a powerful tornado bore down on their Illinois farmhouse, Curt Zehr’s wife and adult son didn’t have time to do anything but scramble down the stairs into their basement.

Uninjured, the pair looked out moments later to find the house gone and the sun out “right on top” of them, Zehr said. Their home, on the outskirts of Washington, Ill., was swept up and scattered over hundreds of yards by one of the dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, leaving at least six people dead and unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighbourhoods, flipped over cars and uprooted trees.

GALLERY: 8 gripping images as tornadoes rip through U.S. Midwest

“They saw (the tornado) right there and got in the basement,” said a stunned Zehr, pointing to the farm field near the rubble that had been his home.

Washington Mayor Gary Manier estimated that 250 to 500 homes had been damaged or destroyed. It wasn’t clear when residents would be allowed to return.

“Everybody’s without power, but some people are without everything,” Manier told reporters in the parking lot of a destroyed auto parts store and near a row of flattened homes.

“How people survived is beyond me,” he said.

WATCH: Tornadoes reported in Illinois

The unusually powerful late-season wave of thunderstorms brought damaging winds and tornadoes to 12 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and western New York.

Illinois was the hardest hit, with at least six people killed and dozens more injured. Authorities said Monday that two other deaths occurred in Michigan.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn promised all the assistance the state could provide to victims of what he said were the deadliest November tornadoes in state history.

“We’re all in this together,” Quinn said.

The governor and others said the search for anybody trapped in the rubble continued, but officials doubted that the death toll would climb. Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director Jonathon Monken said rescuers had just one field left to search in Washington before they can say with confidence that everyone has been accounted for.

The six people who died in Illinois included an 80-year-old man and his 78-year-old sister who were killed by a twister that hit their farmhouse near the rural community of New Minden. A third person died in Washington, while three others perished in Massac County in the far southern part of the state, authorities said.

One of the Massac County victims was identified as 63-year-old Scholitta Burrus of Brookport, Ill.

“They found her over there buried amid the destruction,” McCracken County Deputy Coroner Ryan Johnston said.

Moments before the tornado struck his home in Washington, Jim Svymbersky went into his basement to retrieve his weather radio – a simple act that may have spared his life.

“Saved by a weather radio,” he said Monday outside a supply store where he was picking up plywood to board up blown-out windows.

Washington, a town of 16,000 about 140 miles southwest of Chicago, appeared to have suffered the most severe damage. The tornado cut a path about an eighth of a mile wide from one side of town to the other, state trooper Dustin Pierce said.

Of the roughly 200 people who were injured, 120 of them were in Washington when the tornado struck, officials said.

Across farm fields a little more than a mile from where Zehr’s home once stood, several blocks of homes were destroyed.

“The whole neighbourhood’s gone. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house,” said Michael Perdun, speaking by cellphone.

The Illinois National Guard assisted with search-and-recovery operations in Washington.

View image in full screen

As the cleanup got underway, authorities kept everyone but residents and emergency workers out of the affected neighbourhoods. With power off and lines down in many areas, natural gas lines leaking and trees and other debris blocking many streets, an overnight curfew kept all but emergency vehicles off pitch-black roads. The only lights visible across most of Washington on Sunday night were red and blue flashes from police and fire truck lights.

Pierce said there were reports of looting.

About 75 friends and neighbours helped Zehr to salvage his family’s belongings. He said he’d been at church when the tornado hit but that his wife, Sue, and son were at home.

A friend, Keith Noe, said the Zehr family still felt fortunate.

“They both walked out of the basement and that’s what counts,” Noe said.

Across Washington, an auto-parts store with several people inside was reduced to a pile of bricks, metal and rebar; a battered car, its windshield impaled by a piece of lumber, was flung alongside it.

“The employees were climbing out of this,” Pierce said, gesturing to the rubble behind him. None of them was seriously injured, he said.

State spokesman Brian Williamson said hospitals reported treating about 60 people in Washington.

About 90 minutes after the tornado hit Washington, the stormy weather darkened downtown Chicago. As the rain and high winds slammed into the area, officials at Soldier Field evacuated the stands and ordered the Bears and Baltimore Ravens off the field. Fans were allowed back to their seats shortly after 2 p.m., and the game resumed after about a two-hour delay.

Just how many tornadoes hit was unclear. Although about 80 reports of tornadoes had come in as of Sunday night, the National Weather Service’s Bunting said the actual number will likely be 30 to 40 range. He said that’s because the same tornado often gets reported multiple times.

Babwin reported from Chicago. Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen and Andale Gross in Chicago, Ken Kusmer and Tom LoBianco in Indianapolis, Ed White in Detroit and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.