Indiana tornadoes kill one, damage homes in US Midwest
The victim’s partner is injured and their log cabin home destroyed in the storms, authorities say.
At least one person has been killed as several tornadoes have touched down in the US state of Indiana, according to authorities.
The tornadoes were reported on Sunday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service, as storms ravaged the Midwestern state’s southern area.
Images and footage from local media showed fallen trees had blocked roads and damaged homes. A large hailstorm was also reported in Indiana and nearby states, officials said.
Emergency officials from Martin County, Indiana, confirmed one death. The victim’s injured partner was airlifted to hospital, Emergency Management Director Cameron Wolf said.
Tornado damages near us pic.twitter.com/rk6EF8cZfd
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The couple lived in a two-storey log cabin, which was destroyed, authorities said. Further details were not immediately available.
“Damage is random. It’s kind of widespread,” Wolf said in an interview with PBS, the Public Broadcasting Service. The hardest hit areas were in sparsely populated areas, he said.
About 75 homes were damaged in Johnson County, south of Indianapolis, including in the towns of Greenwood and Bargersville, officials said.
“Obviously, this is a very dangerous scene for the area,” Bargersville Fire Chief Eric Funkhouser said during a news conference. “We have power lines that are down all throughout that 3-mile area.”
Speaking to the Indianapolis Star, Kimber Olson, 42, recounted telling her eight-year-old son to sit in the bathtub. She then went outside and filmed what appeared to be two tornado columns near her home in Bargersville.
“The sound is deafening,” Olson said. “You’ll never forget the sound. Your ears pop in such a strange way. You get a ring in your ear.”
After the tornado got closer, she went inside, closed all the doors and jumped in the bathtub with her son, she said.
She heard glass explode as her window shattered.
“Every storm I’m going to be terrified,” she said. “I’m going to be watching – very, very vigilant.”
Survey teams were set to visit Martin, Johnson, Daviess and Monroe counties on Monday to assess the damage, according to the National Weather Service office in Indianapolis.
As of Monday morning, about half a million utility customers faced power outages due to the weather in the US Midwest and South, according to the energy tracking website PowerOutage.us.
A few days ago, at least one person was killed and about two dozen people were injured when a tornado hit central Mississippi.
A dangerous heatwave has helped spawn deadly tornadoes in Texas and Florida, where at least four people were killed this month in the storms.
A recent study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society suggested that the types of intense storms that are known to spawn tornadoes are expected to increase as temperatures rise from climate change.
