A dam collapses after rain, wind and tornadoes batter the Midwest. The Chicago area is cleaning up

Hundreds of thousands of people lost power, and even weathermen had to run for safety. The National Weather Service reported a tornado in Des Moines, Iowa, one in Chicago and at least four others in the Chicago area as the storms moved through Monday afternoon and into the night. Police responded to reports of power poles snapping in half. A woman in Indiana died after a tree fell on a house Monday night.

“We heard a gust of wind that was coming up really fast and we decided — my uncle decided — that we were all going to go to the basement,” said Mihajlo Jevdosic, 16, in Norridge, Ill., where residents were swapping stories about the storm and watching a crew cut down a tree. “And when we went to the basement, we heard a big bang and the tree fell on the house.”

The weather service’s Chicago office said preliminary findings indicated an EF-1 tornado struck an area of ​​Chicago Monday night that included the western portions of the Loop. The weather service said EF-1 tornadoes struck two other areas of the Chicago suburbs in Illinois. EF-0 tornadoes were reported in the Chicago suburbs of Illinois and Indiana.

Water overtopped a dam near Nashville, Illinois, and emergency workers spread out to make sure everyone could escape safely. There were no reports of injuries in the community of 3,000 southeast of St. Louis, but one woman was rescued after reporting being waist-deep in water in her home, said Alex Haglund, a spokesman for the Washington County Emergency Management Agency.

About 300 people were in the evacuation zone near the city’s reservoir, officials said. The rest of Nashville was not in immediate danger from the dam failure, but flash flooding on roads raised concerns about water rescues.

The water began to recede in Nashville Tuesday afternoon. But Haglund said evacuees won’t be allowed back inside until Wednesday. The good news: None of the homes appeared to have visible structural damage, Haglund said.

The office manager at Zapp’s Repair in Nashville said 10 vehicles were stranded at the auto repair shop. A dumpster behind the business was floating across Highway 15.

“I can tell you there was 3 feet of water in the office,” Delsa King said. “I was trying to move some vehicles and I couldn’t find the keys in the flood water. … The owner has been there for over 30 years and has never seen water in the store.”

The National Weather Service reported 5 to 7 inches (12.7 to 17.8 centimeters) of rain in an eight-hour period. More heavy rain was forecast. A long stretch of Interstate 64 in the Nashville area was closed.

The 89-year-old dam was last inspected in 2021 and is classified as a “high hazard” dam, meaning a failure would likely result in the loss of at least one life, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The condition of the dam was not available in online data.

As storms raged through the Chicago area late Monday night, workers at a weather service office in the suburbs had to relay reporting assignments to a station in Michigan for five minutes. The agency reported winds in the region as high as 75 mph (120 kph).

“We had a rotational area,” said meteorologist Zachary Yack, referring to extremely rotating wall clouds. “And it developed right by our office here in Romeoville, Illinois. … We went to take cover. We have a shelter here.”

Carol Gillette said she heard a boom that sounded “like a bomb” as trees destroyed cars and homes in Oswego, Illinois.

“I haven’t called the insurance company yet. I don’t know where to start,” Gillette told WBBM-TV.

By midday, 215,000 customers were without power in Illinois, though the number was much higher hours earlier, according to PowerOutage.us. Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports reported dozens of canceled flights Tuesday morning.

A 44-year-old woman died in Cedar Lake, Indiana, on the southern edge of the Chicago area, after a tree fell on her home, the Lake County coroner’s office said. The exact cause of death was unknown.

The Chicago Fire Department reported on the social media site X that only one person was seriously injured in the nation’s third-largest city, a person who was injured when a tree fell on a car.

The storms also knocked out power to thousands of people in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and caused damage to property, trees and power lines. No injuries were reported.

White reported from Detroit and Salter from O’Fallon, Missouri. Associated Press writer Teresa Crawford in Norridge, Illinois, and Associated Press data editor Angeliki Kastanis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.