Tornadoes Near Philly, South Jersey Cause Extensive Damage | The Weather Channel – Articles from The Weather Channel

A string of tornadoes tore across the Philadelphia metropolitan area Wednesday night, trapping people in their homes, damaging buildings, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving tens of thousands of homes and businesses without power.

A 911 dispatcher in Mantua Township, N.J., told weather.com that people were trapped in their basements, roofs were gone and there were reports of some injuries, including broken bones.

The township is in Gloucester County, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.

(MORE: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic Flooding and Tornadoes: The Latest on Ida’s Remnants)

Video from the Gloucester County town of Mullica Hill showed homes ripped apart.

There were also reports of multiple buildings with roofs ripped off, downed trees and debris blocking roads to the north of Philadelphia in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and homes were damaged in Chester County.

Some 100,000 home and business were without power across the state as of about 6 p.m., according to poweroutage.us.

Two shelters were opened in the Philadelphia area, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The weather was spawned by the remnants of what once was Hurricane Ida, which brought pounding rain and high winds across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast Wednesday.

Multiple tornadoes were reported, homes were flooded and water rescues were ongoing in eastern Pennsylvania, western New Jersey and in Maryland.

One person was killed when floodwaters filled the bottom floor of an apartment building in Maryland.

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