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Tornado pummels small Minnesota town

A tornado touches down Tuesday outside Kandiyohi, Minnesota.
A tornado touches down Tuesday outside Kandiyohi, Minnesota.

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A mile-wide tornado passes through the small Minnesota town of Buffalo Lake, causing heavy damage but killing no one.
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No deaths are reported as a tornado hits Manchester, South Dakota.
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(CNN) -- A mile-wide tornado passed Tuesday night through the small south-central Minnesota town of Buffalo Lake, causing heavy damage but killing no one, the city's police chief said.

"We've had no serious injuries, no fatalities," said Buffalo Lake Police Chief Greg Gowan. "We've had several people transported to the hospital."

There are also "a plethora of bumps, bruises, cuts and more minor injuries," Gowan said.

At about the same time, officials reported a twister touching down outside nearby Kandiyohi. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

According to Samantha Best with the Renville County communications center, the city of Buffalo Lake has been closed to everyone but emergency personnel.

Emergency sirens had been sounding for about an hour before the storm hit, said Gowan, explaining why casualties were low.

"I saw something [that] looked [like it was] out of the movie 'Twister,' maybe a mile wide, coming down with a classic funnel shape -- inky as black oil -- coming right to town."

The tornado flattened a grain elevator on the edge of town and heavily damaged a church.

"We came out ... to find heavy, heavy damage up and down Main Street, heavy damage all over the city," Gowan said.

"My town is pitch black. I've got hundreds of power lines all over the place. I've got trees down all over the place."

Buffalo Lake is about 75 miles west of Minneapolis.

Severe weather also battered eastern South Dakota.

The tiny community of Manchester -- numbering just a handful of homes and businesses, according to Dan Kight of the Kingsbury County Sheriff's Department -- was virtually wiped off the map.

"There's a business that's partially left, but everything else is gone," he said, noting only three or four families live in Manchester. According to Kight, some residents were transported to the hospital with injuries.

Manchester is located about 75 miles northwest of Sioux Falls.

A line of severe thunderstorms passed through Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota Tuesday evening, spawning numerous tornadoes across the region.


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