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Multiple Tornadoes Touch Down In Dayton, Ohio, Bringing Catastrophic Damage

By: Bill Chappell I NPR, Vanessa Romo | NPR
Posted on: Tuesday, May 28, 2019

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Updated at 7:33 a.m. ET

Several tornadoes touched down in highly populated areas around Dayton, Ohio, and surrounding communities late Monday night, causing catastrophic damage. The city is currently under a boil-water advisory. And while the storms devastated dozens of buildings and trees, only minor injuries have been reported, officials said Tuesday morning.

“Last night about 11:30, tornadoes struck the Dayton area,” Dayton Fire Chief Jeffrey Payne said. “However, we have yet to find one fatality, and we have had three minor injuries. I find that pretty miraculous.”

Those with injuries included people who had to be pulled out of severely damaged buildings, Payne said. He credited the early warning system that informed the public of an impending dangerous tornado system — and he praised residents for following instructions to seek shelter.

The National Weather Service sent out urgent bulletins overnight, warning that dangerous twisters were causing considerable damage and urging people to stay out of harm’s way.

Tornadoes were reported in Mercer, Darke, Miami and Montgomery counties. Search and rescue crews are now combing through the area, including “live find” crews and dogs that can help find victims of the powerful storm, officials said.

Many areas of Dayton were hit hard, fire officials said, along with nearby areas of Troy and Stanley. In addition to trees and power lines, the tornadoes peeled roofs off of houses, brought down businesses’ walls and collapsed ceilings.

“Debris being lofted into the air by a tornado south of Circlevile, Ohio,” the NWS tweeted just after 1 a.m. ET.

Multiple buildings have collapsed and at least one house has been cut in half, KOCO Meteorologist Michael Armstrong relayed on Twitter. He added that a “¼ mile stretch of power poles broken … Medics having difficulty accessing areas.”

Reports of gas leaks came in all night long, fire officials said Tuesday, adding that with a new day starting, new risks could arise as people turn on their home appliances.

Due to widespread power outages, the city of Dayton is asking residents throughout Montgomery County to conserve water. “We have lost power to both water plants and pump stations,” officials said on Twitter. Those plants will rely on generator power until electricity can be restored.

The last large storm to hit Dayton came in 2008, when Hurricane Ike knocked the city into a blackout for about a week. But in that case, its water supply was not affected, officials said Tuesday.

Even before the tornadoes hit, an earlier storm had already raged through the Miami Valley, knocking out power to tens of thousands of residents. Dayton Power and Light reported more than 64,000 customers were without power as of 2:00 a.m. By 7:30 a.m., that figure had dropped to 55,000 of the utility’s 520,000 customers.

The NWS office in Wilmington, Ohio, estimated that at the worst point, the storms and tornadoes left about 5 million people without power.

In some hard-hit neighborhoods, people were trapped in collapsed buildings, the NWS reported. Firefighters and EMTs are having a difficult time reaching emergency locations due to debris in the streets and wires down.

Photos taken by the Dayton Daily News show cars with the roof caved in by fallen trees or under piles of wood from a destroyed house nearby. Another shows a two story house with one of its walls ripped out. Remnants of commercial buildings, whose brick or cinder block walls have collapsed are also depicted.

The city of Celina, northwest of Dayton, was particularly hard hit. Police are asking people to avoid driving into the city due to live wires and severe damage.

Local school districts have canceled classes after sustaining damage to school buildings.

Emergency crews are still working through a backlog of calls, Payne said. He added that regional task force teams had been activated to help with the effort, bringing crews from Cincinnati and other cities.

Montgomery County Sheriff Rob Streck said “that due to an overwhelming number of calls, the public should not call 911 unless something is sparking or someone is injured or in immediate danger,” WDTN 2 News reported.

The Ohio Department of transportation is asking locals to avoid I-75 which is blocked by debris. Photos posted to Twitter by ODOT show snow plows trying to clear fallen trees from Interstate 75 north of Dayton. “Please avoid this area while we work to clear the interstate following the storm,” the department wrote.

Suspected tornadoes also left behind destruction in the Indiana town of Pendleton, about 100 miles west of Dayton.

NWS forecaster David Roth told NPR the violent weather is part of an unusual pattern that has also brought flood worries to Arkansas and Oklahoma where a tornado in El Reno left two people dead on Saturday. Roth said it may take up to a week for the weather pattern to change and return to calmer conditions.

Tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings remain in effect.

WYSO reporter April Laissle contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Some facts reported by the media may later turn out to be wrong. We will focus on reports from police officials and other authorities, credible news outlets and reporters who are at the scene. We will update as the situation develops.