The Indiana State Police said there are “many significant injuries” after a tornado tore through the community of Winchester on Thursday, part of a storm system that also unleashed suspected twisters that damaged homes and businesses in parts of Ohio and Kentucky.
“There have been many, many significant injuries, but I don’t know the number. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what those injuries are,” Indiana State Police Superintendent Douglas Carter told reporters just before midnight Thursday. “There’s a lot that we don’t know yet.”
Earlier in the night state police said they were investigating reports of deaths but at the news conference Carter said there were “no known fatalities.”
State officials called on Indiana Task Force One to help with search efforts in Winchester, a town of 4,700 people located nearly 70 miles (112 kilometers) northeast of Indianapolis, according to a post by the rescue team on X. The team is one of 28 Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency-sponsored Urban Search and Rescue teams in the United States.
“I’m shaken; it’s overwhelming,” Winchester Mayor Bob McCoy said. “I heard what sounded like a train and then I started hearing sirens.”
He and his wife were hunkered in a closet during the twister, which hit about 8 p.m.
“I’ve never heard that sound before; I don’t want to hear it again,” McCoy said.
The suspected tornado damaged a Walmart store and a Taco Bell in Winchester, Randolph County Sheriff Art Moystner told FOX59/CBS4. Travel throughout the county is restricted to emergency management workers only, he said.
At about the same time as the tornado hit Winchester, another suspected twister touched down about 75 miles (120 miles) to the east in Ohio. The tornado hit near the southern end of Indian Lake, impacting the villages of Lakeview and Russells Point, said Sheri Timmers, a spokesperson for Logan County, home to the villages.
“As far as we know, we have lots of injuries. We don’t know the extent of the injuries,” Timmers said. “An RV park was impacted.”
Multiple buildings in the Indian Lake area were damaged, Timmers said, but the full extent of the destruction was still being assessed. Whether anyone was missing in the aftermath, was not immediately known.
“They’re right now doing some searching,” she said.
Amber Fagan, president and chief executive of the Indian Lake Area Chamber of Commerce, called the village of Lakeview “completely demolished,” saying homes, campgrounds and a laundromat were hard-hit by the tornado.
“There’s places burning,” she said. “There’s power lines through people’s windows.”
A shelter has been opened for anyone displaced.
In Ohio’s Huron County, emergency management officials posted on Facebook that there was a “confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado” near Plymouth — some 75 miles (120 kilometers) northeast of Indian Lake.
To the west of Winchester in Delaware County, emergency management officials said initial assessments suggested that up to half of the structures in the small town of Selma were damaged by a possible tornado.
“We are relieved to report that only minor injuries have been reported thus far, with one individual transported to the hospital for treatment,” the Delaware County Emergency Management Agency said in a news release. About 750 people live in Selma.
Earlier, storms damaged homes and trailers in the Ohio River communities of Hanover and Lamb in Indiana.
The Ohio governor’s office said they did not have any information about fatalities in the state.
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