More than a million Americans sit in the dark across the Midwest after severe storms hammered the region Tuesday — killing at least two people, snapping power lines like twigs, and leaving families to fend for themselves while Washington ships billions abroad.
The storms tore through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio with hurricane-force winds, confirmed tornadoes, and flash flooding. Emergency declarations followed. Utility crews from out of state rolled in. Columbus, Ohio's mayor said power could be out for days. This is the same country whose leaders find no shortage of money for foreign adventures but can't keep the lights on at home.
In Portage, Indiana — about 30 miles southeast of Chicago — a person died in a suspected house explosion during the storm. Firefighters couldn't even reach the scene. "It seemed that every road had a tree down," Police Chief Mike Candiano told reporters. Officers parked a mile away and ran toward the home on foot. Fire Chief Chris Crail said finding a path through downed trees and power lines was nearly impossible. Police Capt. Rob Maynard, a 50-year resident, called it "probably the most severe weather event that any of us here can remember."
In Ohio, a resident of Roseville died during a health emergency when first responders couldn't get through flooded roads. Gov. Mike DeWine warned that the flood dangers would persist: "This is not something that will end tonight."
The National Weather Service confirmed two EF-1 tornadoes near Chicago — one in southern Cook County, another in eastern Will County. The broader system, which swept from Iowa into Indiana over several hours, likely qualified as a derecho — a prolonged straight-line wind event whose damage can rival tornadoes or hurricanes, according to the Storm Prediction Center. A wind gust of 99 mph was recorded in Gary, Indiana.
NBC News reported over 1 million electricity customers without power across Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee as of Tuesday evening, citing poweroutage.us, with the heaviest outages in Ohio and Indiana. AP News, citing the same tracker, put Illinois and Indiana outages at more than 600,000, with another 290,000-plus in Ohio. Either way, the grid failed on a massive scale.
AEP, the utility serving the Columbus area, said wind gusts topped 80 mph and trees fell across power lines. The company deployed more than 2,000 workers, including crews from other states. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther described "disaster-like conditions" and urged residents to prepare for a prolonged outage: "Things are not going to be fully restored and back to normal later today, or tomorrow, the day after that."
DeWine signed emergency proclamations for Perry and Muskingum counties east and southeast of Columbus due to flooding. Water rescues were underway. Dayton set a daily rainfall record at 2.07 inches, shattering a mark from 1915. In the Chicago suburbs, residents like Javid Jenkins of Homewood drove around searching for gas to power generators and save the food in their refrigerators. "We're built for snow. We're built for cold. We're not built for this," he told the AP.
Kerry Hourigan, standing outside her Tinley Park home of 25 years with no roof, had a simpler concern: "I just bought a new barbecue grill, and I have no idea where that is. It's disappeared."
Flights at Chicago's two major airports were temporarily halted. The Lake County, Indiana, Fair canceled its wrestling night. The Westerville, Ohio, library closed after rain poured through the atrium. Ordinary life, interrupted.
AEP and its fellow utilities will restore power eventually. The crews are working. But the next storm will come, and the grid will fail again — because the political class that appropriates your tax dollars has decided that rebuilding someone else's country matters more than hardening yours.
