Tornadoes Tear Up Trailers, Church; 4 Die : Storms: Funnel clouds touch down in four states in Midwest and South. Near Houston, at least 17 people are injured at mobile home park.

Tornadoes struck across parts of the South and Midwest on Friday, smashing mobile homes and flattening a church near Houston.

Four deaths were blamed on the stormy weather, one in Kentucky, one in Tennessee, one in Ohio and one in Texas.

The Texas tornado also injured at least 17 people as it plowed through a trailer park near Crosby, 25 miles northeast of Houston.

“It looked like it just sat down on the trailer park and wiped it out,” said Jim McCall, a resident of the nearby Indian Shores subdivision.

The tornado flattened the Community Baptist Church and destroyed most of the Heathergate trailer park, where about 60 mobile homes were parked. “Probably about two-thirds of the trailer park was wiped out,” McCall said.

A 69-year-old woman pulled from the rubble died later at a hospital.

About 30 members of the Community Baptist Church gathered in the dark, puddled parking lot for a prayer service. The 14-year-old church has about 400 members.

“It’s really just a building, it can be replaced. People can’t,” said Associate Pastor Robert Williams.

The Red Cross was told to prepare emergency shelter for about 500 people. Crosby has a population of about 1,800.

The body of Ed Richman, 57, was found beneath his collapsed mobile home in Chattanooga, Tenn. His daughter, Tina Taj, was found in a field surrounded by the rubble of her mobile home about 300 yards from where it had sat, across the street from her father’s. She was believed dead until emergency crews detected a faint pulse, said G.A. Bennett, spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department.

Her 9-month-old son, Joshua Ben Taj, was found about 100 yards away.

“We don’t know if the child was in her arms when it hit, but it’s a miracle either one is alive at all,” said Bruce Garner of Hamilton County Emergency Services.

Taj was hospitalized in critical condition. Joshua was in fair condition with a broken leg, Garner said.

The tornado seemed to touch down first just northeast of Chattanooga in the Birchwood community. It then hit northwest Bradley County, southern McMinn County and southern Meigs County. At least 10 people were injured.

Garner said the storm destroyed 21 mobile homes and 20 houses.

A roof of a concession stand and several bleachers near the Meigs-McMinn county line were damaged behind Riceville Elementary School, where 640 children were huddled in hallways.

“It looks like God was looking over us today,” one parent said.

In Kentucky, the most severe damage was in Bowling Green, where a thunderstorm spawned a series of small tornadoes, the National Weather Service reported.

The storm shattered a glass dome at the Greenwood Mall, the city’s largest. “I was just coming in the door and I heard glass crash, and the wind started blowing and I just hit the floor,” said Frances Graham, who works at the mall.

Three skylights over the mall’s atrium “just exploded from the inside out. You can just see where the vacuum pulled it all out on the roof in millions of little pieces,” said Charles Spicer, a roofer who surveyed the damage.

The mall was evacuated because of a gas leak.

As the storm advanced eastward across Kentucky, trees were snapped and power lines downed, creating scattered power outages across western and central Kentucky.

High wind overturned a mobile home and killed a woman in Hardin County, authorities said.

Wind damaged mobile homes and injured two people in an overturned camper in Illinois, and scattered tornadoes in Indiana damaged trees and farm buildings and injured three people, state officials said. Scattered blackouts were reported in Chicago after thunderstorms.

Storms packing funnel clouds rolled across Ohio, downing trees and interrupting power. The roof was blown off a trailer in southern Ohio, killing a man when he was struck by debris.

Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. said power to about 7,000 customers in southwestern Ohio and northern Kentucky was restored by Friday night.

Thunderstorms also raked parts of Missouri early Friday, peeling off roofs, downing power lines and tree limbs, and pelting some areas with golf ball-sized hail. No injuries were reported. Possible tornado damage was reported along a 20-mile swath southwest of St. Louis.