VIDEO — ‘Thankful to Be Alive’: Communities Left Reeling After Tornadoes Slam Midwest

Midwesterners were hit by violent tornadoes on Friday and many lost their homes as the cyclones ripped through their communities.

The twisters hit around Omaha, Nebraska, and Minden, Iowa. Forecasters issued tornado warnings on Saturday for areas in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, according to the Associated Press (AP).

Video footage shows a tornado moving closer to several homes in Iowa:

Several people were hurt, but no deaths have been reported as of Friday evening, NPR continued:

Three people were hurt in Nebraska’s Lancaster County when a tornado hit an industrial building, causing it to collapse with 70 people inside. Several were trapped, but everyone was evacuated and the injuries were not life-threatening, authorities said.

One of the most destructive tornadoes moved for miles Friday through mostly rural farmland before chewing up homes and other structures in the suburbs of Omaha, a city of 485,000 people with a metropolitan area population of about 1 million.

A homeowner in the Elkhorn area of Nebraska told KETV it was “devastating” for him and his wife to lose their dream home. However, he added they were “thankful to be alive.”

When the tornado approached their residence, he and his family got into a downstairs bathtub for safety. “It was just like the movies said. It was like a freight train and we knew the roof was coming off because that was a loud pop and sucking motion. It was pretty scary,” he commented:

According to the AP, the town of Minden, which is located northeast of Omaha, was hit hard.

KETV noted residents were prepared for the storm but they did not anticipate such severe damage.

Video footage shows the destruction the storm left behind, and one resident said she is happy she and her family lived through the ordeal:

Toccara Steele was in an airplane at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield when she looked out the window and saw a tornado, the Omaha World-Herald reported Friday.

The aircraft had landed just before 5:00 p.m. and was waiting to approach the terminal due to the storm, the newspaper said, adding it was a United Airlines flight from Denver.

Steele said her fellow passengers began contacting their loved ones to find out what was going on with the weather.

The NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory describes a tornado as a “narrow, violently rotating column of air that extends from a thunderstorm to the ground.”

“Because wind is invisible, it is hard to see a tornado unless it forms a condensation funnel made up of water droplets, dust and debris. Tornadoes can be among the most violent phenomena of all atmospheric storms we experience,” the agency said.