LIVONIA, Mich. — A child died and his mother was injured when a tornado ripped through suburban Detroit without warning, while five people were injured when a tornado in Maryland collapsed structures and trapped people inside.
Officials in Livonia, Michigan, said the tornado touched down in several neighborhoods Wednesday afternoon and developed so quickly that there was no advance warning from the National Weather Service or others that would normally lead to the activation of warning sirens.
The storm uprooted a huge tree that fell onto a family’s home and through the roof, landing on the bed where a woman and her 2-year-old son were sleeping, officials said in a post on the city’s website. Crews worked for nearly an hour to remove the roof and parts of the tree, then lift the tree to remove the victims.
The child was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said. The mother was transported to a local hospital in critical condition.
A 2-week-old brother who was in a crib in a separate room was not injured but was taken to a hospital for evaluation, Livonia Fire Department Chief Robert Jennison told WDIV-TV.
“This is a terrible tragedy for our community,” Mayor Maureen Miller Brosnan said in the statement. “Our hearts are also broken and we send our deepest condolences.”
The Detroit Weather Service confirmed on social platform X that an EF1 tornado with a peak wind speed of 153 km/h passed through Livonia. The agency said the tornado traveled a path of more than 5 miles, uprooting trees and damaging some homes.
A weather service representative classified it as a growing storm that did not appear on their radars in time to issue a warning, according to city officials.
It’s been a grim spring for tornadoes in the U.S., where severe weather killed at least 24 people over the Memorial Day weekend alone. April saw the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country. The storms occur as climate change generally contributes to the severity of storms around the world.
Tornado warnings were issued for parts of several other states Wednesday night, including Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware. In coastal New Hampshire, storms toppled trees and caused power outages.
In Maryland, emergency crews responded to reports that people were trapped inside structures that collapsed after a tornado touched down Wednesday night. In Gaithersburg, there were reports of three collapsed structures with people trapped inside, said Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service spokesman Pete Piringer. The most significant damage occurred when a large tree fell on a house, injuring five people who were taken to hospitals, including one with traumatic injuries, he said. No serious injuries were reported in the other structures.
Local television footage showed large downed trees that damaged homes when they fell.
There were nine different areas of possible tornado damage in Maryland that crews will search, checking to see if there was a tornado that passed through or different tornadoes, according to Kevin Rodriguez, chief meteorologist at the weather service office in Sterling, Virginia. The office issued 22 tornado warnings on Wednesday, the fourth most issued in a single day by the office that covers much of Maryland, the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and eastern West Virginia, Rodriguez said.
In Berkeley and Jefferson counties in West Virginia, there were images of what were likely tornadoes on the ground, Rodriguez said. Based on the video, he said they can confirm four tornadoes in Maryland, two in Montgomery County from Poolesville to Gaithersburg and east to Olney, one in the Arbutus area of Baltimore County and another near the Carroll County Regional Airport , in Westminster. These areas still need to be surveyed in the coming days to see how strong they were.
“In early June it is especially rare to see so many tornadoes,” Rodriguez said. “That was pretty prolific for early June.”
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, fires at two homes on opposite ends of the city are believed to have been started by lightning strikes that struck within 15 minutes of each other, Fire Chief William McQuillen said. Both homes were damaged and one was deemed uninhabitable. No injuries were reported.
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