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4 Dead, 40 Hurt as Tornado Hits Boy Scout Camp
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Tack said officials were confident that the state's emergency response teams could handle the crisis because western Iowa had been largely unaffected by the recent flooding.
Tornadoes also touched down in southern Minnesota and eastern Nebraska.
One struck a farm about near Springfield, Minn., about 100 miles southwest of Minneapolis, causing extensive damage to outbuildings. No people or livestock were injured.
Other tornadoes in Minnesota damaged trees, pushed a manufactured house off its foundation and knocked down outbuildings.
There were no immediate reports of damage from the Nebraska twisters, though a lightning strike knocked out radar at the National Weather Service's office in Valley, about 30 miles northwest of Omaha.
From Wisconsin to Missouri, officials in the storm-ravaged Midwest on Wednesday were fortifying levees with sandbags, watching weakened dams and rescuing residents from rising water.
But Iowa was bearing the brunt of it. Inmates in black-and-white striped uniforms were rescued from a jail by boat as the raging Cedar River flooded Vinton and forced evacuations in Waterloo.
"Everything is flooded ¿ everything is up to knee-high," said Patrice Calhoun, of Waterloo, Iowa, who rolled up her pants and waded through water to get home Wednesday morning. "You could actually swim in it."
Officials in Wisconsin were monitoring dams and high water in Indiana burst a levee, flooding a vast stretch of farmland. In Minnesota and North Dakota, strong winds closed a highway and even sent a cow into the air, a witness said.
Along the Mississippi River in Missouri and Illinois, the National Weather Service was predicting the worst flooding in 15 years. Outlying areas could be inundated, but most of the towns are protected by levees and many low-lying property owners were bought out after massive flooding in 1993, officials said.
In southeastern Illinois, floodwaters knocked out the water supply to Lawrenceville, a city of 4,600, and to a nearby state prison Wednesday morning. Officials said it remained unclear what made the city's water main stop working and they would have to wait for floodwaters to recede find the problem.
On the East Coast, officials revealed the weekend heat wave had claimed 17 lives. Most of the victims were elderly. Eight died in Philadelphia of heat-related causes, six others in New York City, two in Maryland and one in the Philadelphia suburb of Pottstown.
