A tornado swept through the Washington, Illinois area on Sunday, destroying numerous houses and overturning cars, and prompting the Illinois National Guard to dispatch 10 firefighters to help search for survivors.
“The whole neighborhood’s gone. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house,” said Michael Perdun.
“I stepped outside and I heard it coming. My daughter was already in the basement, so I ran downstairs and grabbed her, crouched in the laundry room and all of a sudden I could see daylight up the stairway and my house was gone.”
Michele Wagner heard tornado sirens and warnings on the radio so she hunkered down in her basement in her home on Elgin Street.
When she came out her house was gone, she told the Peoria Journal Star.
“There’s a part of the second floor, but the rest of it is just gone,” she said.
Drew Beenders, who was in Our Savior Lutheran Church in Washington when the tornado hit, said via Twitter that “we just stopped church service because we’re in a tornado warning.. the lights just went off.”
“I ripped the steel doors open–that was insane,” he said via Twitter. “It looks like a bomb just went off.”
(AP Photo/The Pantagraph, Steve Smedley)
Brandon Sullivan, a storm chaser, added that there is “catastrophic damage,” including “homes leveled” and “trees mangled.”
The National Weather Service says a tornado that struck the central Illinoiscommunity of Washington had winds between 170 and 190 miles per hour.
The meteorologists said on Monday that the storm had a preliminary rating of an EF-4.
Between 150 and 200 people across the state were injured, while six people were killed, including one person in Washington.
Several blocks of houses had been erased from the landscape in the rural community of 16,000, where Illinois State Police Trooper Dustin Pierce said the tornado cut a path from one end of town to the other, knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and rupturing gas lines.
“I went over there immediately after the tornado, walking through the neighborhoods, and I couldn’t even tell what street I was on,” Washington Alderman Tyler Gee told WLS-TV.
“Just completely flattened — some of the neighborhoods here in town, hundreds of homes.”
Among those who lost his home was Curt Zehr, who said he was amazed at the speed with which the tornado turned his farmhouse outside Washington into a mass of rubble scattered over hundreds of yards. His truck was sent flying and landed on a tree that had toppled over.
“They heard the siren… and saw (the tornado) right there and got into the basement,” he said of his wife and adult son who were home at the time. Then, seconds later, when they looked out from their hiding place the house was gone and “the sun was out and right on top of them.”
(AP Photo/The Pantagraph, Steve Smedley)
At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, spokeswoman Amy Paul said 37 patients had been treated, eight with injuries ranging from broken bones to head injuries that were serious enough to be admitted. Another hospital, Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, treated more than a dozen, but officials there said none of them were seriously injured.
Steve Brewer, Methodist Medical Center’s chief operating officer, said that doctors and other medical professionals were setting up a temporary emergency care center to treat the injured before transporting them to hospitals, while others were dispatched to search through the rubble for survivors.
At least 50 homes were leveled. Nearby Peoria also suffered heavy damage after the tornado.
Officials made a shelter at Cherry Tree Shopping Center, as well as Crossroads Methodist Church and the Washington Police Department.
Story developing; check back for updates
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The Associated Press contributed to this report
