A tornado ripped through a small northern Michigan community on Friday, killing at least one person and injuring more than 40. The storm flipped vehicles, ripped roofs off buildings and downed trees and power lines.
At about 3:45 p.m., the tornado hit Gaylord, a city of about 4,200 people 230 miles (370 kilometers) northwest of Detroit.
Mike Klepadlo, owner of the Alter-Start North auto repair shop, said he and his workers took refuge in a bathroom.
“I am lucky to be alive. He blew up the back of the building,” he commented. “6 meters (20 feet) of the back wall is gone. The entire roof is missing. Less than half of the building is still here. It’s bad”.
Emma Goddard, 15, said she was working at the Tropical Smoothie Cafe when she got a tornado alert on her phone.
Thinking the weather looked “stormy, but not scary,” she shrugged it off and went back to what she was doing. Her mother called and she assured her that she was fine.
Two minutes later, she was serving a customer a cold drink when her co-worker’s mother came in yelling for them to go to the back of the building, Goddard told The Associated Press via text message.
They took refuge in the cold room, where they could hear the windows being broken.
When they came out about 15 minutes later, they saw “some of our cars wrecked and insulation all over the ground,” Goddard said. Three neighboring businesses were destroyed, he added.
Brian Lawson, a spokesman for Munson Healthcare, said Gaylord-Otsego Memorial Hospital was treating 23 people who were injured in the tornado and one person died. He stated that he did not know the conditions of the injured or the name of the person who died.
Michigan police confirmed one person dead and said in a tweet that more than 40 people were injured and receiving treatment at area hospitals.