OMAHA, Neb. (NEWSnet/AP) — Tornadoes wreaked havoc Friday in parts of Nebraska and Iowa, as a severe weather outbreak continues in the central U.S.
As of Friday night, there were several reports of injuries but no immediate deaths reported. The injuries included three hurt in Nebraska’s Lancaster County, where a tornado hit an industrial building, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside.
The forecast for Saturday was ominous.
“It does look like a big outbreak again,” said Becky Kern, the warning coordination meteorologist in the National Weather Service’s Omaha office. “Maybe slightly farther south.”
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[Earlier Report: Tornado Emergencies Declared in Nebraska, Iowa as Storms Rolled In]
Storms in Nebraska
Hundreds of houses sustained damage in the Omaha region on Friday, mostly in the Elkhorn area in the western part of the city, Omaha police Lt. Neal Bonacci said.
“You definitely see the path of the tornado,” Bonacci said, adding that many of the homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
Police and firefighters went door-to-door to search anywhere someone could be trapped, Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bossman said.
“We’ll be looking throughout properties in debris piles, we’ll be looking in basements, trying to find any victims and make sure everybody is rescued who needs assistance,” Bossman said.
The tornado warning was issued in the Omaha area on Friday afternoon just as children were due to be released from school. Many schools had students shelter in place until the storm passed. Hours later, buses were still transporting children home.
In one area of Elkhorn, dozens of newly built, large homes were damaged. At least six were wrecked, including one that was leveled, while others had their top halves ripped off. Dozens of emergency vehicles responded to the area.
“We watched it touch down like 200 yards over there and then we took shelter,” said Pat Woods, who lives in Elkhorn. “We could hear it coming through. When we came up our fence was gone and we looked to the northwest and the whole neighborhood’s gone.”
In Lancaster County, where three people were injured when an industrial building collapsed, sheriff’s officials also said they had reports of a tipped-over train near Waverly, Nebraska.
Two people who were injured in the county were being treated at the trauma center at Bryan Medical Center West Campus in Lincoln, the facility said in a news release. The hospital said the patients were in triage and no details were released on their condition.
Another location hit by a tornado was the eastern edge of Omaha, where the storm passed directly through parts of Eppley Airfield, the city’s airport. Officials halted aircraft operations to access damage but then reopened the facility, Omaha Airport Authority Chief Strategy Officer Steve McCoy said.
The passenger terminal wasn’t hit by the tornado but people rushed to storm shelters until the twister passed, McCoy said.
The Omaha Public Power District reported nearly 10,000 customers were without power in the Omaha area. The number had dropped to about 7,300 by Friday night.
The American Red Cross and Salvation Army were among those announcing emergency shelter efforts. Creighton University in Omaha canceled a first responder-military appreciation event that was scheduled for Saturday at a college baseball game.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen posted on the social platform X that he had ordered state resources to be made available to help with the emergency response and to support first responders as they assess the damage.
“Nebraskans are no strangers to severe weather and, as they have countless times before, Nebraskans will help Nebraskans to rebuild,” Pillen said.
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Storms in Iowa
After passing through the airport, the tornadic weather crossed the Missouri River and into Iowa. The National Weather Service in Des Moines's initial estimate is at least 10 tornadoes in central Iowa.
Photos on social media showed the small city of Minden, Iowa, about 30 miles northeast of Omaha, sustained heavy damage.
Daniel Fienhold, manager of the Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, Iowa, said he was outside watching the weather with his daughter and restaurant employees, recalling “it looked like a pretty big tornado was forming” northeast of town.
“It started raining, and then it started hailing, and then all the clouds started to kind of swirl and come together, and as soon as the wind started to pick up, that’s when I headed for the basement, but we never saw it,” Fienhold said.
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Counting the Storm Tracks
While tornado weather itself was a certainty given reports from local law enforcement, the National Weather Service protocols call for researching the storm damage in person, comparing that to weather radar along with photos and videos submitted by storm spotters.
“Was it one long track tornado or was it several tornadoes?” Kern of the National Weather Service said about one of the scenarios.
The agency planned to send out multiple crews over the next several days to determine the number of tornadoes and their strength, which could take up to two weeks, she said.
“Some appeared to be violent tornadoes,” Kern continued. “There were tornadoes in different areas. And so it’s like forensic meteorology, we call it, like piecing together, all the damage indicators.”
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