JACKSONVILLE, Ill. (WAND) – A youth sports complex was badly damaged due to strong storms on Wednesday afternoon.
Online pictures and videos of the Future Champions Sports Complex on Keely Street shows extensive damage to buildings around the park. Debris was scattered across a number of ball fields and several items tore down protective nets.
Storage and maintenance buildings across the street from the complex were also badly damaged.
The Complex posted to social media Wednesday afternoon assuring their staff was safe during the storm and no injuries were reported. The post did share that due to the damages from the storm their restaurant will not be open for wing night this evening, and the status of this weekends baseball and softball games could potentially move to an alternate location.
A tornado warning was issued for the area around 11:45 a.m. as strong storms moved into Illinois from the west and southwest.
The National Weather Service will survey the damage later to determine the cause. It’s possible the damage was created by straight-line winds.
It’s unclear if there are any injuries following the storms in Morgan County. Attempts to reach the Jacksonville/Morgan County Emergency Management office were unsuccessful Wednesday afternoon.
Other communities across central Illinois reported downed power lines and trees. The City of Urbana is telling residents with trees down in the right-of-way to contact the Public Works Department at [email protected]. If you lose power or smell natural gas, call your provider immediately.
As of 2:30 p.m., poweroutages.us reported more than 11,000 people without power in Morgan County. More than 37,000 customers were in the dark across all of Illinois. Edgar County reported more than 6,000 outages and thousand more were in without electricity in Coles, Crawford, and Clark counties.
Due to the power outage, all Edgar County offices will be closed for the rest of the day, Wednesday.
City Water Light and Power crews in Springfield are responding to power outages including the following:
- 15 along W Monroe St. west of Chatham Road
- 11 along Pickering Lane and near the Villa Maria Retreat Center east of Lake Springfield
- 10 along S Spring St and S 1st St
- 7 on Homewood and Reed Avenues
According to CWLP the largest current outage is affecting 453 customers north and south of Lake Springfield along I-55 from Hoechester Road on the northern boundary to Palm Road and Posts Road on the southern boundary.
Storms have been producing small tornadoes, hail, damaging winds, and heavy downpours. The storms are moving quickly to the east and northeast.
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