A tornado ripped through the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday afternoon, with the twister tearing through miles of farmland and subdivisions, damaging hundreds of homes and other buildings.
There were reports of injuries, but it was not yet clear if anyone was killed in the storm.
Multiple tornadoes were reported in Nebraska, but the most destructive storm moved from a largely rural area to the northwest suburbs of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people.
Photos on social media showed badly damaged homes and shredded trees.
Video showed houses in a rural area near Omaha with their roofs torn off.
Police had blocked roads in the area.
Hundreds of Omaha homes were damaged, mostly in the Elkhorn neighborhood on the west side of the city, said police Lt. Neil Bonacci.
Police and firefighters are currently going door to door to rescue those trapped.
Omaha Fire Chief Kathy Bosman said crews were planning to head to the “hardest hit areas” and search anywhere someone might be trapped.
“They will be putting together a strategic plan for a detailed search of the area, starting with the most affected properties,” Bosman said.
“We will be combing the site, which is surrounded by piles of rubble, and will also look into the basement to locate victims and ensure that everyone who needs assistance is rescued.”
Omaha Police Lt. Neil Bonacci said many homes were destroyed or severely damaged.
“We can definitely see the path of the tornado,” Bonacci said.
In one area of Elkhorn, dozens of large, newly constructed homes were damaged.
At least six vehicles were destroyed, some flattened and some with their top halves ripped off.
There were dozens of emergency vehicles nearby.
“I saw it land about 200 yards away and evacuated,” Elkhorn resident Pat Woods said.
“We could hear it coming through. When we came up, the fence was gone, and when we looked to the northwest, the whole neighborhood was gone.”
“The whole area just north of us is pretty flat,” his wife, Kim Woods, added.
Dhaval Naik, who worked with the man whose house was demolished, said three people, including a child, were in the basement when the tornado struck. They escaped safely.
KETV-TV video showed a woman being carried out on a stretcher from a demolished home in Brea, a city just north of Omaha.
Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said there appeared to be few serious injuries, in part because people had been given enough warning about the potential storm.
“It wasn’t a sudden storm that hit us,” Schmaderer said.
“People were warning us about this and that that saved lives.”
On Friday afternoon, just as children were scheduled to be released from school, a tornado warning was issued for the Omaha area.
Many schools evacuated students until the storm passed.
Several hours later, buses were still taking students home.
Another tornado struck an area on the eastern edge of Omaha, passing directly over a portion of Eppley Field, the city’s airport.
Officials closed the airport to aircraft operations to deal with the damage, but have since reopened the facility, said Steve McCoy, chief strategy officer for the Omaha Airport Authority.
The passenger terminal was not damaged by the tornado, but people rushed to shelters until the twister passed, McCoy said.
Flight delays are expected Friday evening.
After passing through the airport, the tornado crossed the Missouri River and entered Iowa north of Council Bluffs.
Katrina Spahr, a spokeswoman for the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency, said damage is just being reported.
University of Nebraska Medical Center spokeswoman Taylor Wilson said no one had been injured yet.
Before the tornado hit the Omaha area, a tornado struck a Lancaster County factory Friday afternoon, injuring three workers, sheriff’s officials said in a damage update.
The building just northeast of the state capital, Lincoln, collapsed, with about 70 employees inside and several trapped, sheriff’s officials said.
Officials said everyone was evacuated and three people were injured, but their injuries are not thought to be life-threatening.
Sheriff’s officials said they also received reports of a train overturning near Waverly, also in Lancaster County.
Two people injured when a tornado passed through Lancaster County were being treated at the trauma center at Bryan Medical Center West Campus in Lincoln, the facility announced in a news release.
The patients are being triaged and details of their condition have not been made public.
The Omaha Public Power District reported nearly 10,000 customers were without power in the Omaha area.
Danielle Feinhold, manager of Pink Poodle Steakhouse in Crescent, Iowa, said she and her daughter and restaurant employees were outside checking the weather. “It looked like a pretty big tornado was brewing” northeast of town, he said.
“It started raining, then hail, then the clouds started swirling and gathering, and the wind started picking up, so I headed down to the basement, but I never got to see it,” said Fien. Hold said.
The weather service also issued tornado watches for parts of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.
Forecasters also warned that large hail and damaging wind gusts were possible.
