Three people were killed in Lakeview, Ohio, as a result of a powerful EF3 tornado that ripped through the Midwest and the South this week, according to officials.
According to officials on Friday afternoon, the responders in Lakeview have finished grid searches for potential victims and have found everyone. Lakeview is about 70 miles northwest of Columbus.
Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas were affected by at least 21 confirmed tornadoes on Wednesday and Thursday.
The EF-3 tornado in Logan County, Ohio generated peak winds estimated to have been at least 136 mph.
A tornado in eastern Indiana had the strongest wind speed rating. High-end EF-3 damage was found by storm survey teams in a localized portion of Winchester, Indiana. The violent tornado caused the destruction of at least two anchored buildings in that area, which indicates winds of 155-165 mph.
In Winchester, the reported tornadoes left 38 people injured, including 12 who were taken to hospitals, Mayor Bob McCoy said at a news conference Friday.
McCoy said they were “very lucky” no fatalities were reported.
“There are houses that are leveled,” he said. “It could’ve been really bad.”
Twenty-two homes were “possibly totally destroyed” and 110 houses are “badly damaged,” McCoy said.
Winchester is situated approximately 85 miles northeast of Indianapolis.
Nearly half of Selma, Indiana’s structures have been damaged, as per the Delaware County Emergency Management Agency.
While the Indiana State Police said earlier there had been at least three fatalities in the state, at a press conference early Friday morning, Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said the information was not correct and no fatalities had been confirmed.
Indian Lake, Ohio tornado: Residents say storm was ‘like a runaway train’
Tornado rips through Indian Lake community: ‘Everything started shaking’
According to the National Weather Service, an EF3 tornado struck the Indian Lake region about 70 miles northwest of Columbus Thursday night. The deadly storms were part of a larger storm system that left a trail of death, debris, and destruction through Indiana, Ohio, and parts of Kentucky.
Officials in Logan County have yet to identify the three people killed at the mobile home park as of late Saturday morning. Authorities also attributed a fourth death to the storm but said that person died of natural causes.
Lakeview resident Travis Gause grew up in the area and was used to hearing tornado sirens regularly. Nothing ever became of them, he said. The tornado ripped through his home on Thursday night, forcing him and his family to take shelter in the bathroom.
“First it was hail, and then everything started shaking, and you feel it almost rip the roof off the house, and I felt the suction just pulling. It was crazy,” Gause said. “I had never seen anything just quite like that.”
Loretta Kinney assured her goddaughter Lucy that there was no reason for fear as the two watched a TV meteorologist caution about storms approaching Logan County on Thursday evening.
Kinney and her brother walked Lucy home, and by the time they returned to their own house, Kinney said she realized just how wrong she was. They went to the basement and stood by as a storm and suspected tornadoes battered the Midwest and Indian Lake region about 70 miles northwest of Columbus.
By the time they emerged, Kinney learned that at least three people had died and homes and businesses around Logan County had been destroyed.
“Just the noise. When they say you hear a train, it’s a noise you’ll never forget,” Kinney said. “Then to come up and see it, it is so surreal. Even though I’m standing here and looking at everything, it doesn’t seem real.”
According to Dodds, there are areas of the county where nearly all buildings were leveled. But he’s also come across areas where one building was destroyed, and the one next to it remained untouched.
“The power of this thing is just amazing. It hopped around, but when you look at it, it’s just amazing,” he said.
Just a stone’s throw away from Main Street in Lakeview, Terri Lamb and Tawney Large stood before their beaten and battered businesses the morning after a tornado tore through the village Thursday night.
It was a catastrophic scene at the small lakeside village, as dozens of its buildings had been ripped to shreds, their windows smashed, power polls fallen over, and many trees uprooted.
Lamb, who owns All Around Accounting, and Large, who owns Head To Toe Salon, have lived in the Indian Lake area for years and have never seen destruction of this magnitude.
While the tornado didn’t significantly damage their businesses, Lamb and Large expressed their sorrow for the many Lakeview residents who suffered significant damage to their homes, some even destroyed.
“To look around, and you’re used to seeing buildings standing, and now they’re just demolished or halfway there, you just hope and pray for everybody’s families and everybody with what they got going on,” Large said.
Lamb and Large kept their spirits high despite the adversity, citing the village’s unwavering resilience.
“We’re Indian Lake strong, and we’ll be back. This community will come together,” Lamb said.
Greg McDougle and his dog were able to relax in the bathtub together while staying with his friend and former neighbor, Blaine Schmitt.
“We just crawled in the bathtub, got hunkered down, drew the shower curtain over us, and that’s when it just came through,” he said while packing up some belongings before he and his parents traveled out of town.
“It was over as fast as it started … It just happened so fast and it is, it’s just like a runaway train going right through your house.”
McDougle used to live in the house right next to Schmitt before he moved two years ago. Now, all that remains of his old home is scattered debris, a single flattened wall and the foundation.
Despite feeling rattled, McDougle was thankful just to have survived it all.
“It was God. He was with us,”
Next door, Schmitt’s home — the one McDougle and Schmitt sheltered in during the storm — was still standing Friday morning, but the entire front face of the residence was ripped off, and a large tree was toppled onto its roof.
“It sounded like a freight train literally went through the living room,” Schmitt said.
Luckily, Schmitt and McDougle managed to get through the storm unscathed.
“I thank God that I’m alive and that my kids weren’t here. It was very emotional when I first got here, and it’s been emotional ever since then. But I pray every day and it paid off,” Schmitt said.
