By JOEY CAPPELLETTI, ED WHITE and SEAN MURPHY (Associated Press)
PAVILION TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — At least eight tornadoes have touched down in Ohio, and three in Michigan as severe storms swept through the central U.S. late Tuesday and early Wednesday. One man in Tennessee died when a tree fell onto the vehicle he was in.
The storm that passed through northeastern Tennessee brought strong winds that knocked down powerlines and trees. Claiborne County Sheriff Bob Brooks said a 22-year-old man was in a car hit by one of the trees.
The National Weather Service reports confirmed tornadoes touched down on Tuesday in Ohio, including five in Warren County in the state’s southwest region. The confirmations came on Wednesday after crews surveyed the damage caused by the strong storms, which included hail and heavy rains and caused power outages for thousands of customers.
Weather service meteorologist in Michigan, Nathan Jeruzal, said the tornadoes there touched down one each in Kalamazoo, Cass and Branch counties — all in the southwestern part of the state.
Kalamazoo County’s Portage area was hit hard as a FedEx facility was torn apart and more than a dozen mobile homes were destroyed.
Tornadoes were first reported after dark on Tuesday in parts of Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, while portions of Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri were also under a tornado watch, according to the National Weather Service. The storms came a day after a deadly twister ripped through an Oklahoma town.
Samantha Smith held a box Wednesday afternoon as she left her mother’s partially wrecked home in Michigan’s Pavilion Township, about 137 miles (220 kilometers) west of Detroit. Inside the box were her grandmother’s ashes. Finding the most cherished of items gave Smith a rare moment of relief amid the storm’s devastation.
“Finding this box is the best thing that’s happened to me these past 24 hours,” she said. “The main thing we were all worried about was my grandma’s ashes.”
Her parents and brother were injured during the storm. Her brother suffered a broken pelvis and broken back, but he and other victims all survived, Smith added.
“I have thanked God probably a billion times since this happened yesterday,” she said. “My kids are healthy and good. We just gotta make back up what we lost.”
In southern Indiana, the National Weather Service confirmed a tornado with a preliminary EF-0 rating and 85 mph (137 kph) winds touched down early Wednesday, damaging homes in a subdivision north of the city of Sellersburg, located about 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of Louisville, Kentucky.
The Clark