Ball State remained relatively unscathed during Sunday’s massive storms. No students or faculty reported injuries and no campus buildings were damaged.
A storm that caused roughly 65 tornadoes across the Midwest, according to the National Weather Service, passed over Muncie around 4 p.m. There was no reported damage, said a Delaware County Emergency Management official, except a few downed power lines at 3 p.m., which caused roughly 1,000 Indiana Michigan Power customers to lose electricity.
Tracy Warner, a spokesperson for IMP, said the company worked to fix hazardous situations and restore power after resolving potentially dangerous situations. He said nearly 78,000 people were out of power Sunday night system wide, including Fort Wayne, Ind., and southern Michigan. The worst cases were further north.
Students in several residence halls were escorted or told to head to the lowest floor of their hall to wait out the storm after the weather service issued a tornado warning for Delaware County.
The service lifted the tornado warning around 4:45 p.m., though Ball State sent a text emergency alert around 4 p.m. to inform students of a tornado warning until 5:15 p.m.
Maddie Penney, a Park Hall desk worker, said official protocol for a tornado warning involves resident assistants telling students to head to the first floor or basement while staff monitor the situation.
Gov. Mike Pence said 12 Indiana counties reported either tornados or damage Sunday during the storms according, to The Associated Press. Pence plans to tour the cities of Kokomo, Washington and Lafayette to asses the most hard-hit areas.
Kokomo declared a state of emergency and asked people to stay inside their homes, according to the AP. The Kokomo Police Department posted several photos to Twitter of buildings that had roofs torn off and a destroyed bank.
Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight said Sunday’s storm is the worst he has seen in the 48 years he has lived in the city.
“The whole neighborhood’s gone,” Michael Perdun, a Washington, Ind., resident said in an AP article. “The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house. … All of a sudden, I could see daylight up the stairway and my house was gone.”
By nightfall, the storm had killed three in the city as police received reports of looting taking place.
Officials have said the unusually powerful storm hit late in the severe storm season, which led some to be surprised when the tornadoes touched down, according to the AP.
“People can fall into complacency because they don’t see severe weather and tornadoes,” Matt Friedlein, a weather service meteorologist, said. “But we do stress that they should keep a vigilant eye on the weather and have a means to hear a tornado warning because things can change very quickly.”
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