Injuries reported, homes damaged and destroyed as severe weather hits several states

Homes were destroyed and damaged in Indiana and state police were assisting in search and rescue efforts in the city of Winchester, as a band of storms moved across the Midwest on Thursday, officials said.

Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter said at a late night news conference that earlier reports of three deaths were incorrect and state police were not aware of any deaths — but he said there was a “terrible, terrible event” in Winchester and many significant injuries.

Some buildings have been leveled, Carter said.

“I heard what sounded like a train,” Winchester Mayor Bob McCoy said of the storm.

“We need to really wait until the morning to really see what the true damage is,” he said. “We’re going to continue to work through the night and try and find people.”

Randolph County emergency officials warned that a confirmed tornado was on the ground near Winchester at 7:56 p.m. and moving toward the city of around 4,800 near the Ohio border.

The National Weather Service said 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.

Up to half the buildings in Selma, a community of around 750 people west of Winchester, may have been damaged, emergency management officials said.

“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.”

The Emergency Management Agency in Delaware County, where Selma is, said despite the damage it was relieved to report only one minor injury as of late Thursday.

Indiana State Police initially said there were three deaths in Winchester. Carter, the state police superintendent, said he was glad that the information changed.

“The good news is, is at this point in time we don’t know,” Carter said. “I’ll tell you, coming over here I thought the death toll would be in excess of 20 or 25 people, based on the information that I was receiving.”

Ascension St. Vincent Hospital in Winchester said that as of midnight it had received 39 patients from the storms.

The storms occurred on a day when tornado watches stretched across a band of the U.S., from northeast Texas, through parts of Arkansas and Indiana, and into Ohio. More than 13 million people were under tornado watches Thursday night, according to the weather service.

There were eight reports made of tornadoes in Ohio, Indiana, and Texas as of late Thursday, according to a National Weather Service storm reporting website, but those are unconfirmed reports and sometimes more than one refers to a single storm.

There were 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.