Lancaster Tornado Levels Amish Schoolhouse, Damages Buildings

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) - A powerful storm that blew through Pennsylvania spawned at least two tornadoes, one that damaged dozens of buildings over a five-mile stretch of rural eastern Lancaster County, where daylight Thursday revealed rooftops ripped off, some homes collapsed and an Amish schoolhouse leveled.

The National Weather Service also confirmed a tornado touched down near Wyalusing in Bradford County, where several buildings were reported damaged.

The tornado that hit eastern Lancaster County had winds topping 100 mph, leaving a quarter-mile swath of damage through Salisbury Township.

A crew was already at work Thursday rebuilding the Amish schoolhouse, which roofer Derek Cummings said looked like it had been hit by a bomb. He said it was hoped the 1,200-square-foot, one-story school could be rebuilt in a week.

Emergency management officials said they had no reports of deaths or injuries.

PPL, an electric company, was reporting thousands of customers without power early Thursday in Lancaster County and several east-central Pennsylvania counties. Met Ed, another utility that serves some of the same area, also reported outages. Both companies expected to restore service to all customers by Thursday night.

PECO worked to restore electricity to more than 8,000 customers without power in Philadelphia and four surrounding counties.

A family that lives near a collapsed building in Lancaster County took refuge in their basement during the storm.

"We got alerts on our phone and it was quite unusual," Galen Huyard said. "So we hit the basement and we stayed down there until we thought it was clear."

"We heard a gush of wind and that was about it," said his wife, Caroline Huyard.

(Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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