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Tornadoes Tear Through Central Illinois
(IRN)-More than a dozen homes were damaged or destroyed and tens of thousands lost power across Central and Southern Illinois as severe storms tore through the region.

Glenn Murphy was outside on his parents' farm in Girard when a suspected tornado came through. Today, little of the farm remains intact: just a damaged house and a couple of silos.

"You're looking at a 100… over 100 year old barn that's gone, you're looking at a farmstead that's been here… well, my folks bought it in 1956 and moved here. And it was basically here since then," Murphy said.

Murphy said he was at one of the outbuildings when he "saw" the storm coming.

"It was a gray cloud. It was one of those invisible ones, you couldn't see the tail or nothing. Lot of noise, you could hear it long before you could see it," he said.

Ameren Illinois got the call at around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday to repair damage near Girard. Project foreman Bruce Ervin says his crews have been at the scene since then. They erected eight new utility poles to hold the new guy-wires and power lines they had to install.

Ervin says he didn't know what to expect when arriving on scene. "You hope you can get to the poles that are broke off without being drug around with a bulldozer, which is what's going on today," Ervin says. "I guess when we get done with this, we're going to Southern Illinois."

No injuries or deaths in Illinois have been reported as a result of this storm.

(Source: Illinois Radio Network)
04 20 11 by Newsroom
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