Ohio tornadoes: Thousands without power and at least one dead in ‘dangerous’ storms

Up to five million people affected by the outages

Tornadoes swept through western Ohio on Monday night, destroying homes and causing widespread power outages. One person was killed and dozens were injured.

The storms were among 53 twisters that forecasters said touched down on Monday across eight states stretching eastward from Idaho and Colorado.

Jeffrey Hazel, the mayor of Celina, near Dayton, said 81-year-old Melvin Delhanna died during the tornado “as a direct result of a vehicle entering his house”.

In Mercer County, where Celina is located, emergency management director Mike Robbins said that 12 people were injured in the storm. Mr Hazel said three of those injuries are considered to be serious but none are life-threatening.

The National Weather Service (NWS) said on Tuesday morning that roughly five million people throughout the state had been affected by the power outages.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Storm Prediction Center showed that 14 suspected tornadoes touched down in Indiana, 11 in Colorado and nine in Ohio.

Dayton, the fifth-largest city in Ohio with 140,000 residents, was particularly affected. Nearly 60,000 residents were without power after the storm.

Homes and apartment complexes were levelled during the storm, devastating residents and leaving authorities scrambling.

“I don’t know that any community that is fully prepared for this type of devastation,” Dayton assistant fire chief Nicholas Hosford said on ABC’s Good Morning America.

The city tweeted that first responders are currently “performing search and rescue operations and debris clearing”.

The NWS says that it “will be conducting damage surveys for the next few days”. Utilities are expecting restoration to take several days.

For now, Dayton city officials have asked residents to conserve water, as power was lost in the city’s water plants and pump stations.

Montgomery County, where Dayton is located, Miami County, and Greene County were the most affected by the tornadoes, which authorities described as large and dangerous. The National Guard has been deployed in the aftermath.

Tornadoes also touched down in nearby Trotwood, where the mayor told residents that power lines and trees were down.

Ohio’s tornado spree marks the latest in a particularly harsh year for tornadoes in the US, which have caused major damage and several deaths in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, and several other states.