Ohioans among at least 15 killed as storms rip through area

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Powerful storms stretching from the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes wrecked two Indiana towns and killed at least 20 people Friday in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.

The system tore roofs off schools and homes, flattened a fire station, flipped over tractor-trailer trucks and damaged a maximum security prison. It was the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

Authorities reported 13 deaths in southern Indiana, where Marysville was leveled and nearby Henryville also suffered extreme damage.

“Marysville is completely gone,” said Clark County (Ind.) Sheriff’s Department Maj. Chuck Adams.

At least five people also died in Kentucky where Gov. Steve Beshear declared a statewide emergency and deployed 50 National Guard troops to assist with recovery.

In Ohio, at least two deaths was reported as the National Weather Service reported at least five possible tornadoes.

One of the Ohio deaths is reportedly a man in his 50s from Bethel, 35 miles southeast of Cincinnati, where a tornado was said to have touched down.

Four of the Indiana deaths are in Holton , where roads into the town were barricaded . News Center 7 reporters talked to residents in nearby Otter Creek Twp.

David Luke told News Center 7 that his family took shelter in their basement while a tornado ripped off pieces of the roof, one side of the house and the front door.

Power is out in the area and emergency crews are focusing their efforts on the hardest hit sections of town leaving residents in other areas to check on their neighbors by flashlight.

Dozens of houses were also damaged in Alabama and Tennessee two days after storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.

The storms passed through the Miami Valley on Friday afternoon knocking down tree limbs and power lines. Roughly 3,000 Dayton Power & Light customers in Greene, Miami and Preble counties were without power shortly after the storms moved through the area.

A tree that fell onto power lines, which sparked a fire at a house on Meadowview Drive in Montgomery County’s Washington Twp.

The storms prompted the National Weather Service in Wilmington to issue tornado warnings in parts of Preble, Montgomery, Miami and Darke counties.

Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport briefly suspended operations as the storms rumbled through that area. Tornado warning sirens sounded from Miami to Hamilton counties.

Thousands of schoolchildren in several states were sent home as a precaution, and several universities, including Miami University in Oxford where tornado sirens sounded five times, were closed.

The Huntsville, Ala., mayor said students in area schools hunkered in hallways as severe weather passed in the morning.

At least 20 homes were badly damaged and six people were hospitalized in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area.

In the Huntsville area, five people were taken to hospitals, and several houses were leveled by what authorities believed were tornadoes Friday morning. The extent of the people’s injuries wasn’t immediately known, and emergency crews were continuing to survey damage.

An apparent tornado also damaged a state maximum security prison about 10 miles from Huntsville, but none of the facility’s approximately 2,100 inmates escaped.

Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said there were no reports of injuries, but the roof was damaged on two large prison dormitories that each hold about 250 men. Part of the perimeter fence was knocked down, but the prison was secure.

“It was reported you could see the sky through the roof of one of them,” Corbett said.

For residents and emergency officials across the state, tornado precautions and cleanup are part of a sadly familiar routine.

A tornado outbreak last April killed about 250 people around the state, with the worst damage in Tuscaloosa to the south.

Forecasters warned of severe thunderstorms with the threat of tornadoes crossing a region from southern Ohio through much of Kentucky and Tennessee.

By early Friday afternoon, tornado watches covered parts of those states along with Missouri, Illinois and Indiana.