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Fierce Storm Hits Pennsylvania, Injuring 24, Damaging 50 Homes

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From Associated Press

A storm packing high winds ripped through south-central Pennsylvania on Wednesday, damaging at least 50 homes and injuring 24 people, including one critically, authorities said.

Thirteen-year-old Christy Hetrick was at home when the storm hit. She said she heard “kind of like a screeching noise” and looked outside to see many trees knocked over. She said the storm lasted about an hour.

“I had tears in my eyes because it was so horrible,” she said.

David Ondrejik, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in State College, said he received a wind report of 73 mph in Lancaster County.

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Sixteen people were taken to Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, while an additional eight sought treatment on their own, said hospital spokeswoman Anne Wilkinson.

High wind and heavy rains have damaged hundreds of houses, stalled cars, breached small dams, downed power lines and closed roadways from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard in an onslaught of severe weather that began Monday.

The storms wreaked havoc with airline schedules as well, delaying flights Wednesday to New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport by more than three hours.

Other airports along the East Coast -- in Baltimore, Washington, Boston, New York and Philadelphia -- experienced delays up to an hour.

In New Jersey, residents of Lumberton -- the town hardest hit by floodwaters -- awaited word from inspectors on when they could return to their homes to assess the damage and start cleaning up.

The weather service said Clarks Mills, Wis., was hit by a tornado Tuesday afternoon.

Meteorologist Gary Austin said the tornado skipped along a path 4 1/2 miles long, damaging a dozen houses and farm buildings. There were no injuries.

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Storms also moved through Michigan late Tuesday, bringing high winds and hail up to 2 inches in diameter.

Damage was mostly limited to downed trees, which cut power to about 54,000.

In Kentucky, power outages numbered in the hundreds of thousands as winds, reaching sustained gusts of 80 mph, toppled trees and power lines. In Louisville, some officials said the outages were the worst since the tornados of April 1974.

In Maryland, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. declared a state of emergency Wednesday in two counties after floods damaged roads and homes.

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