High winds cause damage, fire kills 5

DETROIT — Wind gusts topping 60 mph in some areas whipped through several Great Lakes states and fanned a blaze that killed five people and injured four others in a Detroit apartment building.

The strong winds Wednesday afternoon also pushed a commuter jet carrying members of the University of Michigan basketball team off a runway during takeoff southwest of Detroit.

A semitrailer rolled over on a bridge in Ohio, commuter trains were stopped in East Chicago, Indiana, after high-voltage power lines fell on tracks, and some school roofs in Michigan were swept away.

More than 800,000 customers lost electrical service in Michigan, utilities there said Wednesday night.

“We have crews working around the clock in difficult weather conditions,” said Guy Packard, vice president of energy operations for one of those utilities, Consumers Energy. “With the rough weather continuing, we expect this to be a multi-day restoration effort.”

It’s not clear what caused the Detroit apartment fire. Flames and smoke danced through windows of the twostory building on the city’s east side Wednesday afternoon as firefighters worked to put out the blaze.

Detroit officials also said the city’s communications operations were receiving “an abnormally high volume” of 911 calls due to problems caused by the windy conditions.

That havoc came as winds were expected to slow down Wednesday elsewhere in the Midwest as emergency crews battled wildfires in four states that have killed six people, choked the air with smoke and destroyed hundreds of square miles of land.

Whereas the fire caused damage and took lives in Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, most of the burned land is in Kansas, where more than 1,000 square miles has been consumed in a series of blazes, including one believed to be the largest in the state’s recorded history.

While fire crews were attempting to extinguish the blazes, cattle producers spent much of Wednesday assessing their losses.

Kansas rancher Greg Gardiner figures he lost 500 cattle. Any badly burned animals found still alive are mercifully shot.

“A lot of people have gone out and run out of shells and come back to get more shells,” said Mr. Gardiner, speaking by cell phone. “It’s pretty grisly work out here right now, to be honest.”