“Those heavy rains, when they fell, a lot of them fell really quickly and in a short time,” Midwest and South hit by winds, rains and flooding
Three people, including two children in Michigan and Arkansas as well as a woman in Ohio, were found dead as a result of severe storms that brought destructive winds, torrential rains, and flash flooding to sections of the Midwest and the South. The storms were blamed for the deaths of all three persons.
The storms that occurred on Monday also caused the loss of electrical service to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the states of Indiana and Michigan. As a result, dozens of schools in the state of Michigan were forced to cancel classes on Tuesday due to the lack of power.
According to a statement made on Facebook by the Monroe, Michigan, public safety department, a girl who was 14 years old died of electrocution on Monday night in the backyard of her home after getting into contact with an electrical wire that had been brought down by a storm.
The girl was with a friend when she reached for what she thought was a stick but was actually a power line, according to the department that investigated the incident.
And on Tuesday morning, one of two young boys who were playing in the community of Warren, which is located near Detroit, accidentally touched a downed power line, according to a report in The Detroit News, which cited an official from the local fire department. One of the boys, who was 8 years old, was in critical condition.
Authorities in Arkansas stated that an 11-year-old child died on Monday as a result of being carried into a storm drain due to the severe rainfall that occurred earlier in the day.
According to the police in Bentonville, a woman in her 47th year who attempted to assist the child was also rescued from the drain and transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. According to the National Weather Service, heavy rainfall brought on by thunderstorms moving rather slowly that moved through the region on Monday triggered isolated flash floods.
“Those heavy rains, when they fell, a lot of them fell really quickly and in a short time,” said meteorologist Brad McGavock with the weather service in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which covers parts of Arkansas. “Water management through those storm drains can really lead to a big volume of water through those culverts.”
A woman in Ohio was murdered on Monday night after a tree fell on her behind her home just as a powerful storm came through the area, according to the fire department of the city of Toledo. The incident occurred in Ohio. Her name and age were withheld from the public.
The storms affected a large portion of the country, including states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. The meteorological service stated that winds gusted up to 58 miles per hour at Battle Creek Executive Airport in Michigan and 60 miles per hour in Huntington, Indiana. During these gusts, tree branches and electricity wires were blown down.
The Governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, announced late on Monday night that he would be declaring a state of emergency because excessive rainfall had made the problems that were already present in one of Jackson’s water-treatment plants even worse and had caused low water pressure throughout a large portion of the state’s capital city. On Monday, after storms had dumped heavy rain for several days in a row, a swollen Pearl River triggered flooding in Jackson.
The flooding in the Mississippi was not as bad as the floods that occurred in Kentucky a month ago, which resulted in death and destruction. At least 39 people lost their lives as a direct result of these floods, while thousands of families lost everything they owned. A little over a month later, residents are still debating whether or not it would be best to start over someplace else or to rebuild where they currently call home.
