Hundreds of residents in the Midwest saw their homes reduced to rubble after a swarm of devastating tornadoes ripped through the heartland on Friday night, shocking footage of the wreckage shows.
As many as 78 potential twisters — mainly in Nebraska and Iowa — damaged hundreds of homes, destroyed businesses and even caused a building to collapse while 70 people were inside, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
There have been several injuries reported but no deaths.
In Omaha, Nebraska — a city of 485,000 with a metro population of more than 1 million — blocks of homes were completely shredded to smithereens in the Elkhorn neighborhood, heartbreaking drone footage from local outlet WOWT shows.
Even more residences were rendered uninhabitable, with complete floors missing and roofs caved in, the footage shows. Residents can be seen wandering the debris-ridden streets where their neighborhood stood just hours earlier.
“We could hear it coming through,” Pat Woods, who lives in Elkhorn, said outside his home. “When we came up, our fence was gone and we looked to the northwest and the whole neighborhood’s 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.
Mayor Jean Stothert announced she will sign a disaster proclamation requesting state and federal aid and Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen said he had ordered state resources to be made available to help.
In Venice, Nebraska, to the west of Omaha on the Platte River, Julie Jorgensen was rushing home to ride out the storm with her husband Dana when she saw a tornado smash into the house while she was just a few hundred yards away.
“I was scared for him because I knew he was in the house, and I watched it hit the house,” she told WOWT. “And I could have videotaped it, and I got my phone up, but i was shaking so bad, I couldn’t figure out how to use my phone.”
Dana had crawled into the home’s crawl space just moments before it hit, and survived.
“It was like a vacuum — the noise and wind, and then things hitting the house — and then the suction on my ears. And within about 30 seconds, it was gone,” he said.
The top floor of their home was completely ripped off.
One of the tornadoes struck 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 only three people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, officials said.
Another tornado passed over Eppley Airfield on the eastern edge of Omaha, destroying four hangar buildings with 32 privately owned planes inside. No one was hurt and the passenger terminal was not hit. The airport has since resumed operations.
After hitting the airport, the tornado spun rapidly toward Iowa and slammed into the small town of Minden about 30 miles to the northeast.
Forty to 50 homes were completely destroyed — which is about half the town of just 600 people.
Two injuries were reported but none were life-threatening, Jeff Theulen, chief deputy of the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office, said 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.
The Minden United Church of Christ survived the storm and has become the town’s center of support for residents needing help, including meals and offering rides to their homes.
“A lot of people are just kind of in shock,” Pastor Eric Biehl said. “It’s all overwhelming now.”
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.
The battered region could see even more severe storms on Saturday night that could bring more tornadoes and dangerous flooding, according to the National Weather Service.
Some 55 million people are under threat of severe weather over a stretch of 1,500 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Plains, Mississippi Valley and into the Great Lakes, Fox Weather reported.
Parts of Oklahoma, which is under tornado watch, could see 5-10 inches of rain by Sunday morning, leading to fears of flash flooding.
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