Storms with heavy rains and tornadoes rattled Illinois, overtopping a dam Tuesday in a southern part of the state and forcing hundreds to evacuate their homes.
Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, sending first responders to the flooded area to make sure everyone got out safely, officials said. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000 southeast of St. Louis, but crews were sent to a home where a woman reported water up to her waist, said Alex Haglund, a spokesperson for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
Officials had earlier said about 300 people were in the evacuation zone near the Nashville City Reservoir.
“Secondary Dam Failure, area has been overtopped with flood waters, please evacuate if you are in the below shaded area!” a post from the Washington County Emergency Management Agency read Tuesday morning.
The rest of the town was not in imminent danger of flooding from the dam break, but flash flooding on roads created worries about water rescues.
“Those are incredibly dangerous right now,” Haglund said. A shelter was set up at a church.
The National Weather Service said 5-7 inches of rain fell over an eight-hour period. Additional heavy rain was in the forecast. An 11-mile stretch of Interstate 64 in the Nashville area was closed because of flooding.
Elsewhere in Illinois, Monday’s rare storm event cut power to hundreds of thousands in the Chicago area, even sending weather forecasters scrambling for safety. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell onto a home.
As the storms swept through the Chicago area, employees at a suburban National Weather Service office had to pass coverage duties to a northern Michigan post for five minutes. The agency reported wind speeds in the region as high as 75 mph (120 kph).
“We did have an area of rotation,” meteorologist Zachary Yack said, referring to extreme rotating wall clouds. “And it kind of developed right near our office here in Romeoville, Illinois. … We went and took cover. We have a storm shelter here.”
A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, Indiana, in the southern fringes of the Chicago area, the Lake County coroner’s office said.
“Dozens of circulations” were reported as the storms sparked “multiple tornadoes at the same time” Monday evening, the NWS reported.
The agency said six survey teams were out across northern Illinois and northwest Indiana Tuesday assessing the damage.
“So far we have 29 different paths of potential damage that we will be investigating today and in the coming days to identify potential tornado tracks,” the NWS posted on X Tuesday morning, warning that “due to the large number of areas of interest,” their efforts could take days to complete.
Maps showed the Chicago area riddled with potential paths of damage.
By 10:30 a.m., 233,000 customers lacked power in Illinois, though the number was much higher hours earlier, according to officials.
The Chicago Fire Department said on the social media site X that there was only one serious injury in the nation’s third-largest city, a person who was hurt when a tree fell on a car.
In Joliet, authorities said many roads were blocked by trees.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was under a ground stop as all departures headed for the airport were grounded for hours Monday. Trains on multiple Metra lines were halted at the tiem “due to high wind warnings.”
O’Hare reported 81 flight cancellations as of Tuesday morning, and Midway International Airport reported eight cancellations.
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