Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 4, 1990 TAG: 9006040126
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PETERSBURG, IND. LENGTH: Long
Wind-toppled trees killed a woman camper in Wisconsin and a young boy in a town park in Indiana, the state that bore the brunt of the fierce weather that began Saturday night.
Across Indiana, officials reported eight dead and at least 150 people injured Saturday in the state's worst tornado outbreak since 1974. The storms left 24 cities in 15 counties with significant damage. Officials tracked about 50 tornado touchdowns in a four-hour period.
In Illinois, a tornado Saturday destroyed or damaged scores of houses and killed one woman. Also Saturday, 10-year-old boy drowned in a storm-swollen river in Milwaukee and an 82-year-old man was killed by a wind-blown tree branch in the northwestern Missouri town of Stewartsville.
Twisters or tornado-force winds downed trees, knocked out power and damaged homes and businesses from Kansas to Michigan and Ohio. In Arkansas, thunderstorms dumped heavy rain, causing flash flooding that closed roads.
In the second round of deadly weather Sunday, high winds at a campground in Rocky Arbor State Park in south-central Wisconsin toppled a tree onto a tent, killing one woman and injuring another.
In the central Indiana town of Mulberry, a 60-foot-tall tree blew down Sunday afternoon in Centennial Park, striking three children.
The injured children were treated at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, where one was in critical condition.
Severe thunderstorms and at least one tornado raked central Indiana on Sunday, downing trees and powerlines, but no serious damage or injuries were immediately reported.
Clouds of black dust sucked from freshly-plowed fields by 40 mph winds created blackouts on highways in the northern part of the state, causing an 18-car pileup on U.S. Highway 31 outside South Bend. Five people suffered minor injuries, police said.
The most disastrous of the many tornadoes to touch down Saturday ripped through the southwestern Indiana town of Petersburg, killing six and leaving hundreds homeless just two weeks after floods knocked out the town's fresh water supply.
The other Indiana tornado deaths were in Bedford, in the southern part of the state, and in Putnam County in west-central Indiana, said Jerome Hauer, director of the State Emergency Management Agency.
At least 150 homes and 18 businesses in Petersburg were destroyed and 120 homes and 58 businesses were damaged when the storm ripped a five-mile path through town, said Al Miller, field operations coordinator for the State Emergency Management Agency. At least 57 people were injured.
Residents of the mining and farming community of 3,000 had been without fresh water for two weeks because of flooding that tore through levees along the White River and severed the water main. A temporary pipeline carries water from a nearby power plant, but it was unsafe to drink without boiling first.
Hauer said the tornadoes were particularly devastating because they spent long periods of time on the ground. One twister was on the ground 38 minutes: 10 minutes in Illinois and 28 minutes in Indiana.
The twisters were the most violent to strike Indiana since a "super outbreak" in 1974 that killed 47 people and a barrage of tornadoes that struck on Palm Sunday in 1965 and killed 137 people in 18 counties.
In Illinois, Jasper County was hardest hit over the weekend, with 30 homes destroyed and at least 70 damaged, while Shelby County reported 12 homes demolished and 26 others damaged. The only death in the state, however, was reported in Edwards County, where a 54-year-old woman died when the twister destroyed her home.
In Albion, a $4 million electronics warehouse recently built by Champion Laboratories was leveled, Edwards County Coroner Mark Curtis said. The twister picked up several 210-barrel oil tanks and whirled them around, spraying crops with oil, he said.
"It's just total devastation," Curtis said. "It's unbelievable. Everything they tell you about tornadoes - the roar like a train, the wind - is true."
Elsewhere over the weekend:
In Ohio, a tornado damaged 100 houses and some 50 businesses in Harrison, outside Cincinnati, and up to 20 houses and 10 businesses destroyed. No serious injuries were reported.
In Wisconsin, several thousand residents of Fond du Lac, an eastern Wisconsin city of 36,000, were temporarily without electric service as tree limbs tore down transmission lines. In Milwaukee, searchers Sunday found the body of a boy, 10, who slipped into the Menomonee River shortly after storms swept through the area the previous evening.
In Minnesota, thunderstorms with wind gusts up to 70 mph and hail moved across southeastern and east-central parts of the state. A tornado damaged four farms Saturday one mile east of Goodhue in southeastern Minnesota, but no injuries were reported.
In Kentucky, tornadoes struck several counties, damaging homes, tossing mobile homes, downing trees and knocking out power. At least five people were injured, none seriously.
In Michigan, a tornado touched down in Big Prairie Township, damaging some vacation trailers in an area where many retirees live. No injuries were reported, and authorities were unable to provide detailed description of the damage.
In Kansas, winds that reached 70 mph tore roofs from homes throughout the city of Hutchinson. Downed power lines knocked out power to nearly 50,000 homes and sparked grass fires.
by CNB