CHICAGO (AP) — Hundreds of people in a southern Illinois town were ordered to evacuate Tuesday as water rolled over the top of a dam, just one perilous result of severe weather that raged through the Midwest overnight with relentless rain and tornadoes and hit the Chicago area especially hard.
Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weather forecasters had to briefly scramble for safety. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a home Monday night.
“We kind of heard a gust of wind that came up quick and we decided — my uncle decided — that we’d all go into the basement,” said Mihajlo Jevdosic, 16, in Norridge, Illinois, where residents swapped stories of the storm and watched a crew clear a tree. “And as we went in the basement, we heard a big thump and the tree fell on the house.”
Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, and first responders fanned out to ensure everyone escaped safely. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000, southeast of St. Louis, but a woman said she was in water up to her waist in her home, 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 city reservoir. The rest of Nashville was not in imminent danger from the dam failure, but flash flooding on roads created worries about water rescues.
The office manager at Zapp’s Repair in Nashville said 10 vehicles were stranded at the auto shop. A dumpster behind the business floated down Highway 15.
“I can tell you there was 3 feet of water in the office,” Delsa King said. “I was going to move some vehicles, but I couldn’t find the keys in the floodwater. … The owner has been there over 30 years and never seen water in the shop.”
The National Weather Service said 5-7 inches (12.7-17.8 centimeters) of rain fell over an eight-hour period. Additional heavy rain was in the forecast. A long stretch of Interstate 64 in the Nashville area was closed.
The 89-year-old dam was last inspected in 2021 and categorized as a “high hazard” dam, which means a failure is likely to result in the loss of at least one life, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The condition of the dam was not available in the online data.
As the storms swept the Chicago area late Monday, employees at a suburban weather service office had to pass coverage duties to a 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.
The weather service confirmed a tornado hit Des Moines, Iowa, as storms rolled through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to calls about utility poles that snapped in two.
The storms then moved east into northern Illinois and the Chicago area, which saw tornado warnings and drenching rain. The weather service said it was sending teams in Illinois and Indiana to check 29 paths of damage for evidence that tornadoes caused them.
Carol Gillette said she heard a crash that sounded “like a bomb” as trees smashed cars and houses in Oswego, Illinois.
“I haven’t called the insurance yet. I don’t know where to start,” Gillette told WBBM-TV.
By noon, 215,000 customers lacked power in Illinois, though the number was much higher hours earlier, according to PowerOutage.us. Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports reported dozens of flight cancellations Tuesday morning.
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.
The storms also cut power to thousands in Ohio and Pennsylvania and caused damage to property, trees and power lines. No injuries were reported.
