Tornado rips through Michigan, killing 1 and injuring 23 | CBC News

A tornado tore through a small northern Michigan community on Friday, killing at least one person and injuring at least 23 others as it overturned vehicles, ripped roofs off buildings and downed trees and power lines.

The tornado hit Gaylord, a city of about 4,200 people about 230 miles northwest of Detroit, around 3:45 p.m. local time.

Mike Klepadlo, owner of Alter-Start North, an auto repair shop, said he and his workers took refuge in a bathroom.

“I’m lucky to be alive. It blew up the back of the building,” he said. “twenty feet [6 metres] of the back wall is gone. The entire roof is missing. At least half of the building is still here. It is bad.”

‘There was a funnel cloud coming our way’

Emma Goddard, 15, said she was at work making a smoothie for a customer when she got a phone alert about the tornado. Thinking the weather outside seemed “stormy, but not scary,” she dismissed it and went back to what she was doing. So her mother called and assured her mother that she was okay.

“Not even two minutes later, I was serving the smoothie when all of a sudden my co-worker’s mom came running through the front door of Tropical Smoothie and yelled at us to run to the back of the building because we were in for a cloud of funnel.” Goddard told The Associated Press via text message.

They took refuge in the cold room, where they could hear the windows being broken.

“I was crammed shoulder to shoulder with my seven coworkers, two of my coworkers’ parents, and a lady from Door Dash coming to pick up her smoothies.”

After about 15 minutes, they came out of the cooler and smelled natural gas, he said.

“As soon as we got out, we were shocked to find some of our cars in pieces and insulation all over the ground,” Goddard wrote, noting that three neighboring businesses were destroyed.

Brian Lawson, a spokesman for Munson Healthcare, said Gaylord-Otsego Memorial Hospital was treating 23 people who were injured in the tornado and that one person died. He did not know the conditions of the injured or the name of the person who died.

Lawson said the pace of people being rushed to the hospital had slowed Friday night.

“From what I’m gathering, things have stabilized a little bit,” he said.

Video posted online showed a dark funnel cloud materializing from a cloud as nervous drivers watched or slowly backed away, unsure of their path.

Another video showed extensive damage along the city’s main street. One building appeared to have largely collapsed and a Goodwill store was badly damaged. A collapsed utility pole lay on the side of the road, and debris, including what appeared to be power lines and parts of a Marathon gas station, was strewn across the street.

The Red Cross was setting up a shelter in a church.

Brandie Slough, 42, said she and a teenage daughter sought safety in a bathroom at Culver’s. The windows of the fast food restaurant were blown out as they left, and her truck flipped on its roof in the parking lot.

“We shake our heads in disbelief, but are thankful to be safe. At that point, who cares about the truck,” Slough said.

‘In less than 5 minutes it’s over’

Eddie Thrasher, 55, said he was sitting in his car outside an auto parts store when the tornado appeared to appear above him.

“There are businesses with roofs ripped off, a row of industrial-type warehouses,” Thrasher said. “RVs were flipped over and destroyed. There were a lot of emergency vehicles heading from the east side of town.”

He said he ran to the store to hold on.

“My adrenaline was going crazy,” Thrasher said. “In less than five minutes it’s over.”

Extreme winds are rare in this part of Michigan because the Great Lakes absorb storm energy, especially in early spring when the lakes are very cold, said Jim Keysor, a Gaylord-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

“Many children and young adults would never have experienced direct severe weather if they had lived in Gaylord their entire lives,” he said.

The last time Gaylord had a strong windstorm was in 1998, when straight-line winds reached 100 mph, Keysor said.

He said the conditions that spawned Friday’s tornado included a cold front moving in from Wisconsin and pummeling warm, moist air over Gaylord, with the added ingredient of rotating winds in the lower atmosphere.

Gaylord, known as the “Alpine Village”, is scheduled to celebrate his 100th birthday this year, with a centenary celebration including a parade and open house at City Hall later this summer.

The community also holds the annual Alpenfest in July, an Alpine-inspired celebration that honors the city’s heritage and a partnership with a sister city in Switzerland.