Tornadoes Batter Plains; Power Lost in Northeast

A storm system blew thunderstorms across the Northeast on Thursday, breaking power lines and blowing out windows after blasting blizzard conditions and tornadoes across the Plains and the Ohio Valley.

At least 12 deaths have been blamed on the weather this week.

Tornadoes and high winds Wednesday destroyed scores of homes and other buildings and shut off power to thousands in Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

“We are going to declare this a state disaster area,” Illinois Gov. Jim Edgar said Thursday after touring hard-hit northern Illinois.

About 100 homes were hit by a tornado in Lemont, Ill., where emergency crews worked all night trying to restore power.

There were some stories of near-miracle escapes. A Lemont resident said a baby was lying in the street after the tornado hit, with insulation around it. “The mother came running out to get the baby and she was just fine. She just had little scratches on her forehead.”

Near Dunkirk, Wis., Roger Knipfer, 57, was remodeling the bathroom of a house when he heard what sounded like a jet engine. After seeing the roof of another farmhouse torn off by a tornado, he dropped through a 16-inch hole in the half-finished floor into the basement as the tornado lifted the house off its foundation around him.

About 20,000 people lost power early Thursday in western New York state when winds gusted to 84 m.p.h. in some areas as thunderstorms streaked across the region. The winds snapped trees at their bases, knocked over utility poles and scattered heavy rain and hail, authorities said. Utility crews had restored power to many customers by 8 a.m.

The outages brought back unwelcome memories of a March 3 ice storm that left more than 300,000 people in western and northern New York without power for up to two weeks.

The line of storms also left at least 20,000 households in western Pennsylvania without power for several hours during the night. Scattered outages remained Thursday.

Winds in Erie, Pa., reached 54 m.p.h. during the morning, ripping aluminum siding from several homes and the front of the two-story General Air Division building. Several plate glass windows were broken, said Paul Sowash of Erie County emergency management.

In downtown Rochester, N.Y., the 30-story Xerox Tower was evacuated and closed for the day Thursday after high winds blew out windows on two floors.

Bad weather along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona forced First Lady Barbara Bush to cancel a visit Thursday to kick off the National Park Service’s 75th anniversary celebration.

An inch of ice coated the runway at Grand Canyon Airport, where Mrs. Bush’s aircraft would have landed. The main visitors’ area on the South Rim of the canyon was under more than 16 inches of snow Thursday.