Storms bringing heavy rain and tornadoes battered Illinois, flooding dams in the southern part of the state on Tuesday and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate their homes.
Authorities said water overflowed from a dam near Nashville, Illinois, and emergency crews were dispatched to flooded areas to make sure everyone got out safely. No injuries were reported in an area of 3,000 people southeast of St. Louis, but emergency crews were dispatched to a home where a woman reported being in waist-deep water, said Alex Haglund, spokesman for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.
Authorities had earlier said about 300 people were in an evacuation zone near Nashville’s reservoir.
“Secondary dam break, flooding has inundated this area. If you are in the shadowed area below please evacuate!” Washington County Emergency Management posted Tuesday morning.
While the rest of the town was not in immediate danger of flooding from the dam breaking, sudden flooding of roads raised concerns about water rescue.
“They’re very dangerous right now,” Haglund said. Evacuation shelters have been set up in churches.
The National Weather Service said 5 to 7 inches of rain fell in an eight-hour period, with more heavy rain expected. An 11-mile stretch of Interstate 64 was closed in the Nashville area due to flooding.
Elsewhere in Illinois, a rare storm on Monday left hundreds of thousands of people in the Chicago area without power and sent forecasters scrambling to ensure safety, while a woman was killed in Indiana when a tree fell on a home.
The storm pounded the Chicago area, forcing a suburban National Weather Service worker to switch coverage to a northern Michigan office for five minutes, where winds there reported reaching 75 mph (120 kph).
“There was definitely a rotating area,” meteorologist Zachary Yack said of the extremely rotating wall cloud, “and it occurred very close to our offices in Romeoville, Illinois. We evacuated. We have a storm shelter here.”
A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, Indiana, on the south edge of the Chicago area, according to the Lake County Coroner’s Office.
The NWS reported that the storm spawned “multiple simultaneous tornadoes” on Monday evening, with “dozens of circulations” reported.
The department said six investigation teams were assessing the damage Tuesday across northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana.
“So far, we have identified 29 possible paths of potential damage and will be investigating them over the next few days to determine the tornado path,” the NWS posted on X on Tuesday morning, warning that the work could take several days to complete “due to the large number of areas being covered.”
Maps showed the Chicago area rife with paths of potential damage.
Officials said 233,000 customers in Illinois were without power by 10:30 a.m., but that number had been much higher a few hours earlier.
The Chicago Fire Department said on social media site X that the only serious injury was one person in the nation’s third-largest city, who was injured when a tree fell on a car.
In Joliet, many roads were blocked by trees, officials said.
Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport was shut down on Monday after all departing flights to the airport were grounded for several hours. Metra trains on several lines were halted at the time “due to high wind warnings.”
O’Hare Airport reported 81 flight cancellations as of Tuesday morning, while Midway International Airport reported eight cancellations.
