By M. Alex Johnson
Emergency teams were combing through the damage Friday from deadly tornadoes in Illinois, as forecasters predicted severe lighting storms would strike from New York to the Gulf Coast.
In central Illinois, residents were carefully sifting through huge piles of debris in the "absolutely devastated" town of Fairdale, the scene of one of two tornadoes late Thursday. One person, identified Friday as Geraldine M. Schultz, was killed there, and officials said some others were still unaccounted for as of Friday.
"We're hopeful that our search will be fruitless in the sense that we won't find anybody," Fire Chief Pete Polarek of the nearby Sycamore Fire Department, which was helping out with the searches, said Friday. "We're hopeful that everybody is out and they've relocated somewhere else."
Nearly every structure in the tiny unincorporated town about 80 miles northwest of Chicago was damaged, said Rockland Fire Department Chief Matt Knott. Some homes were leveled "down to the slabs," he said.
"This town is absolutely devastated," Knott said.
At least 11 people in the community of about 200 residents were taken to the hospital with injuries of various degrees, officials said. The woman who was killed by the tornado had been in her house, which was "totally destroyed," DeKalb County Coroner Dennis Miller said Friday. The town was not equipped with tornado sirens, he said.
The National Weather Service said Friday that storms damage survey teams "will be deployed to work with emergency management and assess the damage that has occurred."
Daniel Prothero, who encountered the scene as he was driving through the area, said, "It was horrible."
Power was shut off to Fairdale so search and rescue crews would be safe, said George Gaulrapp, a spokesman for Commonwealth Edison Co., who said, "It looks like a bomb went off."
"It's a tragedy," Gaulrapp said. "We just pray for the families."
The utility said just before 11 a.m. ET Friday that service had been restored to approximately 58,738 customers in the area.
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One of the tornadoes destroyed a restaurant and flattened at least four houses in nearby Rochelle, authorities said. About a dozen people who were trapped in the restaurant's basement were believed to have been rescued safely, but fire crews were conducting a secondary search Thursday night. Any injuries were minor and didn't require ambulances, they said.
Police told NBC News there was also significant damage in the towns of Kings and Hillcrest. There was no immediate word on injuries there.
"This was a violent, long-track tornado," said Ari Sarsalari, a meteorologist for The Weather Channel.
More than 900 departures and arrivals were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, and more than 950 others were delayed Thursday night.
The tornado was one of several that were spun off across Illinois and Iowa on the second day of a monster storm system that has peppered a 1,500-mile arc with grapefruit-size hail and winds up to 80 mph from Texas up to the Great Lakes and across to North Carolina.
On Friday, the front responsible for the severe weather was forecast to move south and east, threatening storms across the entire East Coast and Southeast.
"There will be the risk of thunderstorms pretty much from New York all the way down to the Gulf Coast," said Weather Channel lead meteorologist Brian Fortier. "There's a lot of lightning around."
The most severe storm risk was within a zone from Virginia and the Carolinas down towards Georgia and southern Louisiana, where damaging wind gusts and hail were possible.
First published April 9 2015, 6:49 PM
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1Gxe4YM
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