Clean up begins after tornadoes hammer parts of Iowa and Nebraska; further storms expected Saturday
Residents began sifting through the rubble Saturday after a tornado plowed through suburban Omaha, Nebraska, demolishing homes and businesses as it moved for miles through farmland and into subdivisions, then slamming an Iowa town.
The Friday night tornadoes wreaked havoc in the Midwest, causing a building to collapse with dozens of people inside and destroying and damaging hundreds of homes.
There have been several injuries but no fatalities reported.
By Saturday morning, the sounds of chainsaws filled the air in the Elkhorn neighborhood of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million. Lumber from the damaged homes lay in piles. Fences were knocked over and the trees were skeletal, missing most of their branches.
Power outages peaked at 10,000, but had dropped to 4,300 by morning.
"We watched it touch down about 200 yards over there," Elkhorn resident Pat Woods told CBS News. "And then we went to get shelter and we came, but we could hear it going through. When we came back up, our fence was gone and we looked over to the northwest and the whole neighborhood is gone."
Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said Saturday that the fire department had completed its search of damaged homes and structures. He described the injuries as minor.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted on the social media platform X that he had ordered state resources to be made available to help. He and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds planned to tour damaged areas. And Pillen planned a news conference later Saturday in Omaha.
The National Weather Service was still evaluating the number and strength of the twisters.
One of them hit an industrial building to the west of Omaha, in Nebraska's Lancaster County, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated and the three injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.
Sheriff's officials there also said they had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, Nebraska.
Another tornado passed over the eastern edge of Omaha, directly through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city's airport. The passenger terminal was not hit, but officials halted aircraft operations to assess damage before reopening the facility, Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy said.
After hitting the airport, the storm moved into Iowa, taking aim at the small town of Minden.
Forty to 50 homes were completely destroyed. Two injuries were reported but none were life-threatening, said Jeff Theulen, chief deputy of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff's Office, at a late Friday briefing.
"It's heartbreaking to see these people who have lost houses, cars, essentially their life until they have to rebuild it," he said, urging people to stay away because of downed power lines.
At the Minden United Church of Christ, which survived the storm and has become a community hub of help and support, there were plans to take 4-wheel-drive vehicles out to devastated parts of town to bring meals to those who need them, Pastor Eric Biehl said.
"A lot of people are just kind of in shock," Biehl said. "It's all overwhelming now."
Tammy Pavich, who stores equipment on the west edge of town, said she "kind of breathed a sigh of relief" after the first round of tornadoes moved through Omaha. Then, she recalled, the storm "hit Minden dead-on."
Todd Lehan, a lifelong resident of the town, said he took shelter in a windowless basement.
"It sounded like a vacuum cleaner on top of your house," he recalled.
Even as the National Weather Service worked to evaluate the damage, the forecast for Saturday was ominous. It issued tornado watches early Saturday for northwestern Texas and across western Oklahoma. The National Weather Service in Wichita issued a warning on Saturday for a large and dangerous tornado heading toward Howard, Kansas. Video posted on social media appeared to show a tornado touching down in Oklahoma.
Tens of millions of Americans remain under the threat of severe storms. A system bringing powerful thunderstorms, hail, damaging wind gusts and possible tornadoes is sweeping across the South and Central regions of the country, while Iowa and Missouri remain under threat for strong tornadoes.