Three people are dead after severe weather struck a trailer park in Winchester, Indiana, on Thursday evening, state police said.
No more details were immediately available from police, who confirmed three deaths in the park on North Cash Drive.
Tornado watches covered a band of the U.S. from northeast Texas across parts of Arkansas, across part of Indiana and into Ohio on Thursday night, according to the National Weather Service.
Winchester’s government announced on social media just before 8 p.m. that there was a tornado warning and that sirens were activated, and it urged people to “Please find shelter!”
Randolph County emergency officials warned that a confirmed tornado was on the ground near Winchester at 7:56 p.m., moving at 40 mph.
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office said on social media that there is “heavy storm damage” and urged people to avoid the Winchester area as emergency crews responded.
The weather service said on a storm reporting website that there is damage in Winchester, most likely from a tornado, but that a tornado had not been confirmed. Survey teams often confirm tornadoes later after they visit scenes of damage.
There was also damage in Selma, a small community west of Winchester, where county emergency officials said an estimated half of the structures in the town of 750 have been damaged.
The Delaware County Emergency Management Agency said despite the damage in Selma it was relieved to report only one minor injury as of late Thursday.
“The sky was completely black,” Lisa Gulley, who lives in Selma, told NBC affiliate WTHR of Indianapolis. She was filming the weather.
“I saw the clouds were kind of spinning and I saw it form, basically over my neighbor’s house, just two doors down — and then it just dropped,” Gulley said. “We barely had time to get in the house.”
Gulley told WTHR that as soon as they got in the hallway of their home, one of their fence panels went flying through a sliding glass door.
“The whole door just exploded,” she said. “It took all the shingles off the back of my house.”
More than 13 million people in the U.S. were under tornado watches Thursday night, according to the weather service.
Winchester is a town of around 4,800, about 65 miles northeast of Indianapolis, close to the Ohio border.
There were also reports of tornadoes and damage in Mercer and Logan counties in Ohio, according to the weather service. In Lakeview, Ohio, buildings were reported destroyed.
In Huron County, Ohio, emergency officials reported a tornado an estimated half-mile wide crossing a highway, according to that report on the weather service’s storm reports website.
The Huron County Emergency Management Agency reported minimal damage and no injuries.
Arkansas State Police said they were responding to downed power lines and damage to roofs in Hot Springs Village, a community of around 15,000 west of Little Rock.