Severe storm hits New York state, killing 4 people

Severe thunderstorms packing strong winds rolled through central New York state and other parts of the East Coast, killing four people, destroying or damaging numerous houses and knocking out power to more than 70,000 utility customers, officials said Wednesday.

Three of the deaths occurred in the rural town of Smithfield, New York, between Syracuse and Utica, after the storms hit at about 7 p.m. Tuesday, the Madison County sheriff's office said. Local emergency management authorities confirmed that the deaths resulted “from three collapsed homes.” The fourth death occurred in Maryland when a tree fell at a summer camp, killing a child.

In Smithfield, at least four homes were completely destroyed and numerous others were damaged, Undersheriff John Ball said.

Early Wednesday, about 72,000 homes and businesses were without power, most in central and northern New York. The storm uprooted trees and tore down power lines across several counties in central New York, part of a broader expanse of extreme weather that stretched from the Ohio Valley and parts of New England through the mid-Atlantic region, police and weather officials said.

The National Weather Service said the winds were likely stronger than 60 mph.

Madison County Sheriff Allen Riley did not identify the victims. He told The Post-Standard of Syracuse he was still notifying their families.

Riley said in a television interview late Tuesday that search dogs were being used to go over the rubble at the Smithfield site and that neighbors were being interviewed.

"We're just picking up parts of the house to see if anybody is underneath them," he said.

National Weather Service meteorologist Joanne LaBounty said investigators will be in the area to determine if a tornado touched down. And Mark Pellerito, a meteorologist for the Binghamton office, told Reuters the storms in and around Madison County "exhibited a lot of rotation," and a number of tornado warnings were issued earlier in the evening based on radar data.

In Carroll County, Maryland, northwest of Baltimore, a storm packing high winds and heavy rain struck at about 7 p.m., catching a group of children at play at the River Valley Ranch summer camp, said Don Fair, a spokesman for the Lineboro Volunteer Fire Department.

He said nine children, age 15 or younger, sought shelter from tree limbs and other debris carried by the winds when one boy in the group was pinned by a fallen tree. The boy was killed. The eight others suffered only relatively minor injuries, Fair told Reuters.

"It's a difficult thing. It reaped a lot of devastation," said Fair, a first responder who lives nearby. “I’m just sad it had to be there."

Severe thunderstorms spawned at least one tornado in Mercer County in northwestern Pennsylvania, and more than 300,000 homes and businesses lost power at the peak of the storms. Early Wednesday, more than 135,000 across the state remained without power, including 74,000 in Philadelphia and its suburbs. The NWS said possible tornadoes were also reported in Perry, Bedford and Sullivan counties in central Pennsylvania.

The National Weather Service said three small tornadoes touched down in northeastern Ohio, causing minor damage, as strong storms moved across the state late Tuesday.

Wire services