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Severe Weather Batters Springfield Area, Destroys Homes
The fire chief in a small central Illinois town says it's a little early for the kind of weather that moved across central Illinois, leaving destruction in its wake.

Officials and residents of Loami, a town of around 800 people located near Springfield, are surveying the large amount of damage caused by a fast moving storm on Sunday. The fire chief, Troy Snider, says at least seven homes are confirmed destroyed and 30 more sustained severe damage.

Snider says everyone is thankful that only one person suffered minor injuries.

"We did have one person transported to the hospital to get some stitches, and that's all I've had reported to me as of yet. We did lose two horses in a barn collapse."

The National Weather Service indicated the line of storms had wind speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and hit north and northeast of Springfield the hardest. Loami, located in Sangamon County, at one point had hundreds of Ameren IP customers without electricity. The utility listed just 63 outages in the county as of Monday morning.

Officials are now trying to figure out if straight line winds or an actual tornado caused the damage. Snider says several tornadoes rolled through the Springfield area three years ago on March 12th, and Sunday's storm was similar to those.
03 08 09 by Newsroom
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