Up to 9 inches of rain brought flooding to Indiana and Ohio on Wednesday, killing a woman, while a tornado in a county north of New York City partly collapsed a commercial building and ripped the roof off a hotel.
Firefighters recovered the body of an Ohio woman who had been trying to pull her daughter from a drainage ditch as a third straight day of rain fell. The National Weather Service issued a flood warning Wednesday for several counties in Indiana.
Pam Soule, emergency management director for LaGrange County in Indiana, said a weather observer in Olive Lake reported 9 inches of rain. Floodwaters damaged at least seven homes in Topeka and two homes in Clearspring Township. Topeka firefighters were filling sandbags to protect other homes, but she said conditions were improving.
“Most of the water that was up over the roads has receded to the point they’ve taken down the high water signs,” she said.
Dianna Snyder, 40, was visiting a public garden in Mansfield, Ohio with her 9-year-old daughter when the girl slipped and was swept through 460 feet of drainage pipe, police Lt. Dave Nirode said. The girl was able to pull herself out on the other side.
Snyder jumped in to rescue her daughter, Nirode said. Her body was found downstream.
Nearby, flooded-out campers had to flee to emergency shelters.
In Ohio’s Ashtabula County, firefighters, sheriff’s divers and a Coast Guard helicopter crew searched for a 21-year-old man reported missing from a group swimming in a creek, said Petty Officer Matt Schofield with the Coast Guard in Cleveland.
Meanwhile, a tornado in Mount Pleasant, N.Y., threw a truck onto gasoline pumps, partly collapsed a commercial building and ripped off a hotel’s roof, said Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano.
There were no reported injuries, officials said, but power was knocked out to more than 4,000 residents.
In North Dakota, parts of which reported temperatures in the 100s on Wednesday, a storm damaged more than two dozen buildings in the McLean County town of Coleharbor, blew grain bins through town and destroyed an old brick schoolhouse, authorities said.
Two minor injuries were reported. Authorities were unsure Wednesday whether a tornado was responsible.
