Four dead, dozens injured in tornado that devastated Iowa city

Central Iowa was rocked Wednesday morning after what police described as a “devastating” tornado killed four people and devastated rural communities.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety said four people were killed and 35 others were injured as a result of the tornado that ripped through the town of Greenfield on Tuesday, a community of about 2,000 people 40 miles southwest of Des Moines.

The names of those killed have not been publicly released, Iowa DPS said. The agency also said the number of injured is likely higher, and that these figures only reflect people treated at designated care locations.

There were 18 tornado warnings in Iowa on Tuesday, as well as one each in Wisconsin and Minnesota, adding to an already exceptionally busy tornado season.

Sergeant Alex Dinkla said at a news conference that at least 12 people had been treated in hospitals – although the city’s Adair County Memorial Hospital was also damaged, forcing first responders to take the victims to facilities elsewhere.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds declined to release the number of injuries or deaths, telling reporters at a news conference Wednesday that “it is still a search and rescue operation and we don’t want to spread misinformation.”

Joan Newell, 77, of Greenfield said the tornado sounded like a “train.”

“So I knew I had to go to my basement,” she said.

Newell said she was trapped in her home for about 45 minutes before she was rescued. At one point she could hear people outside, but no one knew she was trapped.

“They didn’t think I was there and I kept shouting, ‘I’m here!’ But no one could hear me,” she said.

Her Apple Watch eventually alerted 911 that she had fallen and was trapped.

Newell has lived in the area for decades and has experienced a tornado before. But this one was “ten times worse,” she said.

Maggie Masker’s house was torn from its foundation. In the basement, where her family would have taken shelter if they had been home during the tornado, was a pile of rocks.

Fortunately, Masker was at work, her husband had gone to help with the fire brigade and her 2-year-old daughter was in daycare.

“Crazy to think about,” Masker said. “You just think that’s your safe place, and it’s not safe anymore. Never was.”

The risk of severe weather continues through Thursday for about 20 million people from Memphis to New England.

Aerial footage of Greenfield recorded late Tuesday showed entire streets in the tornado’s path reduced to rubble, with piles of rubble among broken trees and demolished cars.

A man in nearby Red Oak, Montgomery County, captured footage of a massive funnel cloud moving through the area as sirens blared and heavy rain fell.

Montgomery County Emergency Management said in a statement that multiple confirmed tornadoes damaged at least 28 homes, with damage ranging from “affected to destroyed.”

Wind turbines were left in ruins near Prescott, Iowa. And the winds were strong enough near the town of Nevada, Iowa, to overturn a truck that was stopped on a highway due to the extreme conditions. There have been no reports of related casualties.

Reynolds declared disaster in 15 provinces and visited the area on Wednesday.

The situation in Iowa was so dire that the weather service said it would deploy three teams from its Des Moines office to survey tornado damage. The results are expected on Wednesday evening.

Elsewhere in Colorado, large hailstones stripped cladding from buildings and shattered car windows. NBC affiliate KUSA from Denver reported that the hail was at times the size of a baseball.

In Omaha, Nebraska, cars were swept away by raging floods brought on by between 4 and 8 inches of rain, leaving some stranded.

Omaha’s NBC affiliate WOWT spoke with Mike Troy, a local man and college football coach, whose home was on a newly created island. The water was not considered deep enough to warrant a rescue, he said.

Nearly 155,000 utility customers were without power in Texas as of 10:20 p.m. ET after a torrid few days of severe weather, according to energy connection tracker PowerOutage.us, while 15,900 were also without power in Wisconsin.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com