At least 1 killed as tornadoes wreak havoc in Illinois

ROCHELLE, Ill. - At least one large tornado touched down Thursday night in northern Illinois, causing significant damage and prompting reports of more than a dozen people rescued from a collapsed restaurant.

One person was killed and seven others were injured in a tiny northern Illinois community after at least one large tornado touched down in the area, authorities said Thursday night.

James Joseph with the Illinois Department of Emergency Management said the person died in the unincorporated community of Fairdale. CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago reported the victim was a woman in her 60s.

According to the Rockford Fire Department, all of the buildings in Fairdale were damaged. Crews were going door-to-door to search for survivors.

"We've had many wind damage situations, but no tornado touchdown to this magnitude," DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott told CBS affiliate WIFR-TV reporter Mike Garrigan in Fairdale, adding that the west side of the community "was pretty well destroyed."

WBBM-TV reported that Gov. Bruce Rauner activated the Illinois Emergency Management Agency to help local rescue crews and the American Red Cross mobilized its volunteers.

The National Weather Service confirmed on Twitter that a tornado was on the ground near Rochelle around 7 p.m. Thursday and urged residents to "seek shelter immediately if in the path of this dangerous storm."

Robin Biggs, an employee at the Super 8 motel in Rochelle, said she took video of the storm, which she said "took everything out in its path."

"I have lived her 18 years and I have never seen a tornado that big or stay on the ground that long," she said. "What we have is a small one touching the ground and going right back up, but this just stayed down and went all the way across the horizon."

Koleen Kessen, who works at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Rochelle, said she went outside and spotted the tornado a few miles away after hearing sirens. She said hotel guests told her the tornado leveled a restaurant.

Ogle County Sheriff Brian Van Vickle said in a news conference that about 20 homes there were severely damaged or destroyed, but no deaths or significant injuries were reported.

Van Vickle said 12 people were trapped in the basement of Grubsteakers, a Rochelle restaurant that collapsed during the storm.

"We knew it hit. We didn't know how bad," one survivor told WBBM-TV at the scene. "When we tried to get out, the whole wall was on top of us, doors going into the cellar."

Around 9:30 p.m., the Weather Service said it could not confirm how many tornadoes struck the area but said one long-tracked storm moved across several counties, sporadically touching down and causing damage.

Winnebago County Sheriff's spokesman Ken DeCoster said funnel clouds also were spotted near Rockford a few miles north but did not touch down.

The system, packing hail and damaging winds, was headed east as storms rumbled through the Midwest and Plains during the region's first widespread bout of severe weather.

The severe weather forced the cancellation of more than 850 flights at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and dozens of others at the city's Midway International Airport.

The Weather Service in Davenport, Iowa, said it had received multiple reports of tornadoes in Scott and Clinton counties in the far eastern part of the state. At least one tornado had touched down earlier Thursday evening in rural Donahue, about 15 miles north of Davenport. The Weather Service had no reports of injuries from those storms.

Minor injuries were reported Thursday in central Missouri when storms toppled trees, utility poles and billboards.

The National Weather Service's "enhanced risk" area stretched from northeast Texas to Michigan, Wisconsin and across the upper Midwest. Forecasters say Philadelphia, Washington and other parts of the Atlantic coast could see the same weather patterns Friday, including Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters golf tournament is taking place through the weekend.

"It's quite an expansive area," said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.

In central Indiana, a 75-year-old woman died Wednesday night after being swept into a rain-swollen creek near Indianapolis. Pittsboro Fire Chief Bill Zeunik said the woman, identified as Doris D. Martin, was clearing debris from a water-filled ditch in her front yard along with her husband when she fell in and was swept away into a drainage pipe. Martin's body was found in a creek nearly a mile away.

In Wisconsin, an interstate north of Milwaukee was closed for several hours Thursday morning after several vehicles became partially submerged in flood water due to heavy rain.

And in Michigan, lightning strikes caused a fire at a mobile home and a fire place explosion, according to authorities. No one was injured in either incident.

By mid-afternoon, temperatures in downtown St. Louis topped 80 degrees under bright sunshine. The balmy burst arrived in stark contrast to temperatures in parts of the northeast; freezing drizzle in New Hampshire delayed some school openings and more than 2 inches of snow postponed the first game of the season for the Portland Sea Dogs in Portland, Maine.

In:
• Illinois