Tornadoes hit path in Midwest

Strong winds ravaged parts of Kentucky and Tennessee early Sunday, following a night when damaging tornadoes were reported in more than a dozen counties across northeastern Missouri and Illinois.\nWinds up to 150 mph early Sunday tore into homes in the central Kentucky counties of Hardin, Hart and Mercer, causing 16 injuries. High winds also damaged homes and businesses in western and central Tennessee.\nIn Missouri, a fraternity house at Missouri's Culver-Stockton College and dozens of buildings in the surrounding town of Canton were hit when a tornado swept through Saturday evening.\nSunday morning, the steel dome of the college's administrative building lay crumpled on a lawn, and the gymnasium, which had held about 1,000 people for graduation hours before the storm hit, was in ruins. Parts of a nearby mobile home park in the town of 2,500 were unrecognizable, but authorities reported no life-threatening injuries.\n"All the furniture, the fridge. I haven't even found the bed yet. The sink is way over there. It's gone. It's all gone," said James Rockhold, 37, who had taken his family to a safer building after hearing about the storm.\nAnother twister tore through South Pekin, Ill., 10 miles south of Peoria, destroying about 50 homes and causing extensive damage late Saturday night, said Scott Gauvin, a spokesman for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.\nTwenty-seven people in the South Pekin area were treated at hospitals, three with serious injuries.\nTornadoes were reported in 10 counties across the central part of Illinois, National Weather Service and local emergency services officials said.\nAt least 25 homes in Lima, Ill., a rural community about 20 miles north of Quincy, were damaged when one tornado touched down, Gauvin said. The post office and a Christian Church in the community of 120 people were destroyed, and the top of the water tower was gone.\n"It looks like a bomb had gone off," said Lima resident Mark Kroner.\nSeveral funnel clouds were also spotted in Sagamon County, where the Illinois capital is located, and there was some flooding from heavy rain, said Bill Russell of the county's emergency services agency.\n"We had a couple of vehicles that went into water and had to be pulled out," Russell said.\nIn northeastern Kentucky, at least 17 people were treated at hospitals and more than two dozen homes were damaged Saturday night after a tornado hit in Lewis and Mason counties near Maysville.\nThe storms stem from a volatile weather system that "has been hung up over the area the past two or three days," said Chris Geelhart, a weather service spokesman. The worst of the storms appeared to have moved out of the region Sunday morning.\nMore than 300 tornadoes have been reported across the Midwest since the start of May, and at least 44 people have died in the storms.\nIn Canton, where the college was damaged, the tornado sirens began sounding about 25 minutes before the tornado hit.\nInside a Comfort Inn just off U.S. 61, a manager began knocking on doors to warn guests, then had a maid light a cigarette under a smoke detector to set it off and get their attention.\nSunday morning, whole sections of the motel's roof were exposed to the rafters and a back wall was torn off, but the guests had all escaped injury.\nJust behind the motel, a County Market grocery store is crumpled in on itself as though it's made of paper.\nStore cashier Beverly Powers, 33, described the tense moments when she and a store manager heard a tornado was headed their way. She that as she manned the public address system, trying to remain calm and asking customers to go into the cooler for safety, she was thinking, "I'm going to die right before Mother's Day"