Some residents in northern Vermilion County are going to be spending their Memorial Day weekend cleaning up storm damage. Powerful winds and torrential rains hammered the Rossville, Hoopeston and Bismarck areas late Friday. Assistant Rossville Fire Chief Allen Willard describes what happened.
‘’The rain hit, and the wind hit – I mean it was just an act of God. It just completely came through and it was unreal,’’ said Willard. ‘’I was standing at the window and a limb went through the window while we were looking through it – so it was scary.’’
The Assistant Chief described the scene along Illinois route one.
‘’Here on route one we’ve got multiple trees that were downed. A tree ripped out a gas line, so we had a gas leak. We’ve got power lines down all over town. It’s quite a mess around here.’’
There were no reports of injuries, but Willard says there is a lot of damage.
‘’A lot of property damage. We’ll have a lot of new roofs. We had a lot of hail come through with it as well. So there will be a lot of new roofs in town. And there’s trees on houses and everything else.’’
The storm also flooded streets and fields in the Rossville, Hoopeston and Bismarck areas. Many fields looked more like lakes Friday evening, and in many areas young corn and soybean crops were underwater.
The Vermilion County Emergency Management Agency says hail in excess of 2-inches accompanied the storm. And EMA says wind gusts were in the 70 mile per hour range.
Rossville Firefighters watch over an area where a tree that was blown over and broke a natural gas line causing a leak.
Streets throughout the Rossville area were littered with limbs and in some cases large trees that were blown down. The damage downed power lines and the community spent the entire night without power.
This is just one of the large trees in Rossville that was destroyed by the storm. Note the size of the tree that was snapped and downed by the powerful winds. Vermilion County Emergency Management Agency says winds of 70 miles per hour were reported in the area. There was no immediate confirmation that a tornado may have caused the damage, however the northern part of Vermilion County….along with Ford and Iroquois Counties….were under a tornado warning at the time.
The heavy rain flooded roads in the Rossville, Hoopeston and Bismarck areas. And many fields looked more like lakes as young corn and soybean crops were left underwater by the flooding. There were no immediate estimates on the damage – but we received no reports of any injuries.
