[Music]
local 4 news starts now with a breaking
news alert
a devastating tornado rips through
northern michigan in a community very
familiar to many metro detroiters
only on the ground for a few minutes but
leaving a wide path of destruction i was
on the ground for a good two miles
and i did wipe out the hobby lobby it
did wipe out jimmy john's quick lube
tonight sadly we know at least one
person has been killed in the weather
dozens more injured with homes and
businesses destroyed that tornado
touching ground at about 4 30 this
afternoon right in the heart of gaylord
team coverage tonight on local 4 news at
11 from the hardest hit areas let's
start with mara mcdonald who just spoke
with the city's mayor mara
hi devin we are at command central for
this operation to get gaylord back up
and running we've been briefed by the
mayor michigan state police as well as
the governor and the bottom line is this
tonight gaylord is in the dark they have
no power there are communications
problems and the damage here is severe
and it is going to take days to assess
exactly how bad all this is
the damage is substantial gaylord's
commercial corridor has been flattened i
would say it was on the ground for a
good two miles
and i did wipe out a hobby lobby it did
wipe out jimmy john's the quick lube out
there on our
west side of town and then it came into
town and it wiped out a lot of homes at
least 10 homes are just gone with other
serious damage all around town 44 people
have been taken to the hospital one
person is confirmed dead the tornado
took out a cell phone tower so
communications here are rough consumers
has 100 troops on the way to restore
power the governor arrived late tonight
and assigned an emergency declaration
it's been a tough week for northern
michigan and we've had the blue lakes
fire to today's tornado right here in
gaylord
i know it's going to be tough family a
tough weekend for families here and for
businesses and for
for the recovery
we're michiganders and we're tough and
we're resilient we've been through a lot
of tough stuff together especially over
the last few years we will get through
this the city is on lockdown police
checkpoints surround the town but
assessing the full scale of what's
happened here is going to take days the
mayor got on his bike in order to get
around the area to see for himself how
bad it all is i've never seen anything
like this in my life
i'm numb i mean i've been
a lot of the a lot of times my my
adrenaline's been going and you know
it's just now it's like you feel
exhausted so i mean i'm concerned about
all our citizens and of course all the
crew trying to help clean everything up
as well too
back here live speaking of crews you
have got resources from around the state
heading up here right now including from
oakland county they are sending their
urban search and rescue team up here
technically devon and karen nobody is
listed as missing right now but there is
so much debris in a mobile home
community as well as an apartment
they need to sort through it to make
sure that is still the case we're live
in gaylord tonight i'm mara mcdonald
local four and gonna need a lot of
daylight for that all right mara let's
turn uh now to jason colethorpe who is
live at the shelter that has been set up
in town where these impacted families
are are staying tonight and jason that's
a lot of people
there are a lot of people devon and just
to kind of continue on with what mars
talking about i can tell you the efforts
to help the people of gaylord well
underway tonight let's start with the
rescue efforts we've seen ems vehicles
just saw another one some of them racing
back and forth here where we are we're a
little east
of downtown and a couple miles from i-75
also the cleanup effort if you look down
this road here you can see one of those
checkpoints mara mentioned and as we
rolled into town we could see at least
two big mdot dump trucks
rolling into town to help out in that
effort and there's also the humanitarian
effort that's ongoing like here at the
e-free church as you said at least 50
people are here tonight that are going
to stay here and they expect that number
to grow over the next few hours
any people calling okay about
water yes
they can bring yes they can bring here
or into the middle entrance the united
way is going to have a room set up in
his 11 years in gaylord pastor scott
disler has seen blizzards but never
tornadoes
and that's why when they hit today he
rushed to his mother's house to get her
and then he surveyed the damage power
poles snapped in half you basically had
to navigate like a war zone you had to
navigate around things just to try to
get to her house and try to get her out
of the house to get her to my house and
then i kind of went down in town just a
little ways and started to see all the
damage to the buildings didn't even make
it down to the worst part but yeah it
was like driving around a war zone his
e-free church is ideal to help during
this disaster it's big it has power and
wi-fi in fact the red cross was set up
and ready to take people in just two
hours after the storm hit the goal here
is to have a safe place for people to
eat and
to have a place to sleep in a disaster
we want to make sure that they're well
cared for and then they feel safe and
there's a lot of people in gaylord
displaced right now there was trailer
parks that were leveled homes that were
demolished so we've just opened up our
building working with the red cross and
the united way kind of a team effort so
that anybody that right now has a need
has a safe place in fact if they need a
ride here we're even sending out our
church vans or church buses to pick them
up
and we've seen that van bringing people
in here tonight it's not just people
that have been uh had their homes
devastated or
hit by this we i talked to a family that
came in earlier tonight that just didn't
have any power so many people don't have
power and they kind of walked me through
what happened with their house they
watched two tornadoes scoot by their
house in each direction but they have no
power tonight they came here just to get
some food and
they headed back to relatives but the
efforts to help the people here underway
and as the pastor told me tonight that's
how they're going to get through this as
a community
coming together leaning on one another
opening doors for one another and
they'll make it through this we're live
at gaylord tonight jason cool thor local
four i spent a lot of time in gaylord
it's a great community it really is
very special you know they're going to
pull together uh not just power that
jason mentioned earlier
talking about cell tower being knocked
out so communications are really tricky
too all right jason uh brett let's get
back to brett here who's tracking the
system this afternoon i was talking to
somebody who's got family up there they
got the alerts and didn't not everybody
knew what to do when you're in an area
where you're just not used to tornado
warnings you know the early warning
systems that we have are only as good as
people's ability to turn them into
action and doing something you know to
take cover you know we talk about it all
the time getting to a safe place
get as many walls between you and the
outside as possible mobile homes are
almost always not a safe place to be
right so getting to a sturdy structure
hopefully we don't have to go through
this kind of thing anymore this summer
but anytime that we do
we really harp on that this is the setup
from earlier today this is the radar at
3 45 pm you can see that classic hook
echo signature just to the west of
downtown gaylord you don't have to be a
meteorologist to really figure out
what's going on here but as you look
within the storm
we look at the winds the velocity how
the winds and the rain are moving inside
this storm anywhere that you see these
reds and these greens coming together
that's indicative of tight rotation and
the brighter these colors are the faster
the winds and therefore the tighter that
rotation is just five minutes later that
rotation just east of downtown still
very strong on top of that
one product that we can look at with
storm tracker for is the debris detector
cc and what we're looking for is this
little blue ball here indicative that
there is debris
lofted above the ground and in this case
it's not meteorological it's not rain
not snow not hail it's likely fencing
it's likely branches metal roofs maybe
other man-made objects so any time that
we see this
certainly very concerning now as this
storm moved from west to east we saw
damage all across the northern part of
the state of course the two tornado
reports from the national weather
service but how about this even hail
baseball sized hail
almost three inches large very large all
this with a cold front that's been still
producing showers and storms it's
sagging south and it's going to give way
to showers and storms for us
tomorrow we'll track those for you
coming up in just a bit yeah think about
getting hit with three inch hail dropped
from several thousand feet all right
brett our mara mcdonald is staying in
gaylard overnight we expect to be able
to get a closer look at the damage
tomorrow morning we'll have some
daylight hopefully which will shed a lot
of light on just how bad this is our
live coverage will continue on local 4
news today saturday starting at 6 a.m
in other news tonight police are still
searching for a driver in a road rage
shooting and crash that left an innocent
woman dead it happened yesterday at the
intersection of middle belt maplewood
police say a pickup and another suv
recklessly drove through a red light
when shots were fired from one of the
vehicles
the pickup driver then crashed into an
innocent woman's car and then ran off
before police arrested them the woman
died from her injuries police say
they're looking for the other driver
two local law enforcement agencies
teaming up in an effort to stop violence
this summer including in greek town
it's important that we collaborate that
we're able to be able to help each other
share information
and come together to be able to solve
crime fight crime in the manner that we
need to i want people to be safe we
don't want people to come down and get
into situations and make impulsive
decisions that literally change their
lives or hurt someone or hurt themselves
plan includes increased patrols also
metal detectors the chief and the
sheriff also planning to go after those
who are drag racing throughout the city
today the michigan supreme court says it
wants more information from governor
whitmer about her request to erase the
state's 1931 abortion ban the court
wants five points addressed including
whether it needs to immediately get
involved this week a judge at the court
of claims froze the dormant law with an
injunction if the u.s supreme court
overturns roe versus wade abortion would
be an issue for the states governor
whitmer wants the state supreme court to
declare that a 1931 ban on abortion is
illegal under the state constitution she
also wants the court to reach over lower
courts and settle it quickly