Ohio Tornado

MILLBURY, Ohio – A community whose high school was destroyed the day before graduation by a tornado that killed three people, including the valedictorian's sister, rescheduled the ceremony as residents sifted through houses in plenty of cases reduced to rubble.
The tornado was part of a line of storms that ripped through the Midwest on Saturday night & Sunday, destroying dozens of homes & an emergency services building in northwest Ohio.
Storms collapsed a movie-theater roof in California & ripped siding off a building at a Los angeles nuclear plant, forcing a shutdown. But the worst destruction was reserved for a strip up to 300 yard wide & 10 miles long southeast of Toledo left littered Sunday with wrecked vehicles, splintered wood & relatives possessions.
The tornado that hit Wood & Ottawa counties had estimated winds of up to 165 mph & was by far the most extreme of five confirmed tornadoes to strike northern Ohio on Saturday, Will Kubina, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said Monday.
At least 50 homes were destroyed & another 50 severely damaged, as well as five commercial buildings. The storm fell over an area of farm fields & light industry, narrowly missing the heavily populated suburbs on the southern fringe of Toledo.

"It's a war zone," Lake Township Police Chief Mark Hummer said.
Hummer said all residents were accounted for after house-to-house searches.
Doug Wensink, 17, who had planned to graduate on Sunday, said the valedictorian lived in a home on a street blocked by fallen tree limbs.
Neighbors dug through a pile of rubble where the house five times stood. There was nothing left but the foundation, which was filled with water & debris. A pool table floated in the middle.
Friends cried as they picked the family's property out of the mud & the mangled trees. One girl emerged from the muddy water carrying a teddy bear as well as a small jewelry box.
Scott Conley said they helped rescue the sister & her five children, who had survived by hiding in the basement. They had arrived at his parents' house across the street about 20 minutes before the storm hit. They said his relatives laid in the stairwell because they didn't have time to get to the basement.
Conley said they saw the body of the kid's sister in the rubble after hours of searching. They said the man apparently ran upstairs to receive a flashlight & could not make it back to safety.
"You try & tell them, you know, that you are going to find their dad," Conley said, breaking down at the memory of the search. "But they could not."
The tornado ripped the roof & back wall off Lake High School's gym late Saturday, hours before the graduation ceremony was supposed to start there. The ceremony was rescheduled for Tuesday at a Toledo community college.
The tornado turned a township police & emergency medical services building in to a mishmash of 2-by-4 framing & pink insulation. At least five police vehicles — half the township's fleet — were destroyed, & one automobile was tossed in to the spot where the building five times stood.
Those killed included a person outside the police department as well as a driver, Hummer said. They said a young kid & five other victims were from Millbury, a bedroom community of roughly 1,200 about 10 miles southeast of Toledo. Hummer said five other people died at hospitals but they did not have details.
In southeastern Los angeles, extreme storms & high winds ripped siding off a building at the Fermi 2 nuclear plant, causing it to close down automatically, said Dan Smith, the public information officer for Monroe County.
DTE Energy, which owns the nuclear plant on the shore of Lake Erie, is still inquiring in to the extent of the destroy, & there is no estimate when the plant will return in to operation, spokesman Man Cerullo said. They emphasized that the reactor itself was not damaged, other "plant-related equipment."
About 14,000 people were without power but it wasn't clear whether that was directly related to the nuclear plant's shutdown or because of destroy to power lines in the area, said Gregory Williams, director of emergency management for Monroe County.
Eleven people with minor injuries were taken to hospitals from Dundee, Mich., where a tornado touched down with winds of about 130 mph. Tornadoes also were reported in California. Over a dozen people were injured in Dwight, where about 40 mobile homes & 10 other homes were destroyed, California Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Patti Thompson said.
The roof of a film theater collapsed in Elmwood, about 30 miles west of Peoria. State Trooper Dustin Pierce said 150 to 200 individuals who had been inside were evacuated to the basement & no one was hurt.
The storms left a trail of damaged homes in northern Michigan as well as a tornado sighting was reported, but no one was injured. In eastern Iowa, buildings were damaged & one person was hurt when a tornado touched down in Maquoketa.
A cold front colliding with warm unstable air produced the storms that struck Saturday night, said meteorologist Marty Mullen of the National Weather Service, & that front was draped from New England south through the mid-Atlantic region on Sunday. The storm weakened as it headed east.
The day after the Toledo-area tornado hit, residents were searching fields looking for anything salvageable.
The storm destroyed Ronald Johns' house & barn & flung his cast-iron bath tub in to a wheat field, but his spouse managed to discover a wristwatch, still working, amid the scattered bits of their home near Millbury.
On Saturday night, Johns looked out the window & could not even see the barn directly across the road. The chimney fell through the first floor as soon as the retired couple made it to the basement, pinning Johns with bricks until his spouse, Jan, managed to free him.
Ronald Johns, 74, said they were blessed. "We didn't get down there five seconds fast," they said.