Amateur video posted on social media of powerful tornadoes ripping through Iowa looked like scenes right out of the movie Twister.
The dramatic images showed the roofs of homes torn to shreds as tornadoes waded through rural parts of the Hawkeye State on Thursday.
A flurry of tornadoes swept through central Iowa, flattening buildings and damaging the courthouse in Marshalltown and hitting an agricultural machinery plant in Pella as people were working.
Authorities said a hospital was evacuated and there were some injuries from the storms.
Hardest hit appeared to be Marshalltown, a city of 27,000 people about 50 miles northeast of Des Moines, where brick walls collapsed in the streets, roofs were blown off buildings and the cupola of the historic courthouse tumbled 175 feet to the ground. The city declared a state of emergency Thursday evening.
A powerful tornado is seen above wading through a small town in Iowa on Thursday
The tornado destroyed a number of rooftops in its path. It was captured on amateur video and uploaded to social media
The dramatic images show darkened skies and huge funnel clouds
A number of people were injured while a hospital was evacuated
UnityPoint Health hospital in Marshalltown was damaged, spokeswoman Amy Varcoe said.
Varcoe said all 40 of its patients were being transferred to the health system’s hospitals in Waterloo and Grundy Center.
The Marshalltown hospital’s emergency room remained open to treat patients injured in the storm, Varcoe said. Ten people injured in the storm had been treated by 7pm Thursday, she said.
She did not know how serious those patients’ injuries were.
Another tornado hit agricultural machinery maker Vermeer Manufacturing, where some people were still working, in the town of Pella, about 40 miles southeast of Des Moines.
It scattered huge sheets of metal through a parking lot and left one building with a huge hole in it.
Pella Police Lt. Shane Cox told television station KCCI-TV that some people from the plant were taken to a hospital, but he didn’t know the extent of injuries or the number of people.
A tornado is seen near Pella, Marion County, Iowa, in this still image obtained from a video on social media
Damage to production plants at Vermeer Corp., a farm and construction equipment manufacturer in Pella, Iowa, is seen in an aerial view on Thursday
A local resident runs past a tornado-damaged building on Main Street in Marshalltown, Iowa
Local residents walk past a tornado damaged building on Main Street in Marshalltown
Debris lies on the ground as residents clean up after a tornado swept through Bondurant, Iowa
A worker cleans up debris from the tornado damaged Marshall County Courthouse’s tower on Thursday
An uprooted tree lies in front of the tornado damaged Marshall County Courthouse
Roy Schweinebart, of Marshalltown, Iowa, shovels bricks from a tornado-damaged building near Main Street
Workers clean up bricks from a tornado-damaged business on Main Street
Stephanie Moz, of Marshalltown, Iowa, center, stands in the front window of her tornado-damaged business on Main Street
Emergency responders were attempting to get inside the damaged building to see if anyone was trapped.
Weather forecasters said the tornadoes formed suddenly and took them by surprise.
Alex Krull, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Des Moines, said that forecasting models produced Thursday morning showed only a slight chance of strong thunderstorms later in the day.
‘This morning, it didn’t look like tornadic supercells were possible,’ Krull said.
‘If anything, we were expecting we could get some large hail, if strong storms developed.’
Additional funnels were reported as the storm moved east of Des Moines past Altoona, Prairie City and Colfax.