MERRILLVILLE, Ind. — Maria Williams was up as the sun rose early Friday morning, inspecting the damage at her family’s home in her blue scrubs. Broken wood and foam insulation scattered the front lawn, and a large tree torn out by its roots rested in the grass. The roof was in shambles.

“Four of my five kids have grown up in this house,” Williams said, her eyes pooling with tears. “So (I’m) just trying to figure out what it’s gonna look like again. If I can even rebuild it.”

It had been just hours since a tornado tore through Merrillville on Thursday evening, leveling hundreds of buildings but causing only one minor injury. The northwest Indiana town was one of several communities outside Chicago hit by tornadoes Thursday night, which came at the tail end of a two-day bout of severe weather that swept through the Midwest.

Chicago’s National Weather Service said it is conducting storm surveys over the next few days to gauge exactly how many tornadoes touched down Thursday as well as their intensity.

Kevin Doom, a meteorologist with the weather service, said that the debris path through Merrillville indicates that a tornado likely swept through and around the town. Damage extends west of Merrillville toward St. John and northeast of the town by Hobart, Doom said early Friday morning.

He said tornadoes also likely hit Streator and Dwight in north-central Illinois, as well as far southern Lake County in Indiana.

Streator officials said Friday morning that four people were transported to the OSF Center for Health with minor injuries and that 11 homes were damaged, several of which were destroyed. They said recovery efforts would continue throughout the day.

“We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel, both in Streator and regionally,” Mayor Tara Bedei said.

Meanwhile, in the city, thunderstorms and heavy winds knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of customers and caused more than a thousand flight delays and cancellations. The Chicago White Sox postponed their game against the Atlanta Braves and Mumford & Sons delayed their concert at Wrigley Field.

Residential areas feel impact

Williams, who works as a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Chicago, said she was about to start her shift Thursday night when her daughter Kari called, telling her that she believed a tornado hit their house.

Kari Williams didn’t realize what had happened at first, the 20-year-old said. Not until she heard the wind. She and her 12-year-old brother were watching Netflix, and they didn’t know that storms were poised to sweep through Merrillville.

“Both me and my brother got blown back,” she said. They tried to go down to their basement but there were cracks in the ceiling, so they fled upstairs and stayed with a neighbor for the night.

After her daughter called, Williams couldn’t focus on the long drive home or her pending shift — all she thought about was getting back. It was dark when she arrived, and they had no power, she said. She couldn’t make out just how hard they’d been hit.

In the morning though, the loss set in.

“I don’t even know what to say,” the 40-year-old said. “Words can’t even.”

“I worked so hard for the little bit I do ... and it’s just, it’s just gone,” she added.

Merrillville officials said only one minor injury has been reported related to Thursday’s storm from a semi that flipped. Much of the town’s infrastructure wasn’t as lucky.

More than 200 buildings were damaged, officials said, some of which were destroyed. This damage was largely concentrated in residential areas, they said.

Town Council President Rick Bella plans to sign a declaration of emergency on Friday, beginning the process of receiving state and federal aid for recovery. The American Red Cross also set up a shelter with 700 beds.

Catholic schools damaged

Merrillville’s Andrean High School, which ended classes for the summer about two weeks ago, also sustained heavy damage. The school’s windows were cracked, some shattered, while the roof had peeled off in places. Downed power lines covered a stretch of road in front of the building.

When James Myers, the Catholic school’s director of facilities, left the campus around 6 p.m. Thursday everything was intact. He started to grow worried during his drive home when the weather alerts piled up, though.

When pictures of the damage popped up on Facebook, he knew he had to head back. He hoped the impact wouldn’t be more than a few downed trees and broken windows. But what he found around 9:30 p.m. was devastating, so much so that he went straight to the chapel and said a prayer.

“It literally is just so overwhelming,” he said.

Myers spent the rest of the night working to remove debris with a retired Andrean employee who’d raced to lend a hand. By midmorning Friday, Myers was still out doing what he could to help, though he knows it will likely be a long process.

“I mean, you could spend weeks here with 30 guys (and be) cleaning up still,” he said.

All three of Myers’ kids are students at Andrean. His focus is on figuring out a way to get students back in school somehow, he said.

In the city’s West Lawn neighborhood, the first layer of St. Nicholas of Tolentine School’s roof blew off, barely missing a nearby truck. Some classrooms also sustained water damage.

“We were thankful the debris landed where it did and did not hurt anyone,” said Principal Mariagnes Menden.

‘I heard everything fall’

Martin Dean said he was getting off work when he got an alert on his phone about the Lake County storm. The 35-year-old South Side resident visits Merrillville weekly for his job as an independent contractor and happened to be in town Thursday.

As he was about to get in the shower at his friend’s apartment, where he was staying, he heard rumbling. When he looked out the window, Dean saw debris “flying everywhere.”

“I heard everything fall,” he said. He didn’t know what time it was. When the tornado moved though, he lost track.

Around 11 p.m. Thursday night, Dean began surveying the damage outside for himself. Plastic panels and tree branches littered parking spaces. A car’s back windshield gaped open, the glass long gone. A power line hung over the roof of Dean’s truck.

The power had been out for hours by then, Dean said. As he flashed his light around the dark, trying to get a gauge of what happened, Dean said, “This is terrible — it’s going to take a couple days to clean this up.”

“Everybody gotta deal with the aftermath,” he said. He had work again early Friday morning. He wasn’t sure where he was going to stay overnight.

Still, he was glad to hear that people were safe. “It’d be a little chaotic,” he said, “but it’ll be alright.”

_____

(The Chicago Tribune’s Deanese Williams-Harris contributed reporting.)

____

©2026 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.