Parts of Indiana and Michigan were cleaning up from destruction and tragedy that included the death of an Amish man in a horse-drawn buggy during recent separate storms that produced numerous confirmed EF-1 and EF-2 tornadoes.

Damage from the April 2 storm was still being tallied at press time, but Bourbon, a small community in northern Indiana where farming has a dominant presence, was described by many people the next morning as looking like a “war zone.”

There were no reported injuries despite multiple homes crushed by fallen trees and several tractor trailers tipped over by strong winds on nearby U.S 30. For a while, nobody in the town of about 1,600 people had power.                                                                          Three days earlier, tornadoes and straight-line winds of up to 90 mph were blamed for similar damage in both states and the death of 84-year-old Lonnie Yoder.

According to Elkhart County Police, Yoder was in a horse-drawn Amish buggy blown over along County Road 20 near Middlebury, a few miles from the Michigan line.

About 30 miles to the south, the same storm flattened two barns used for teaching agriculture at Marian University’s Ancilla College near Plymouth, along with a mobile home and at least two other barns in the area.

Brienna Slonaker, an agriculture and natural resources educator for Purdue Extension in Marshall County, said an EF-1 tornado that caused the damage traveled about three miles from neighboring Starke County.

“It went through some farm fields as well. That one was kind of more out in the open and didn’t hit as many structures as the Bourbon one did,” she said.

In Michigan, a bar well over a century old collapsed from what was confirmed as an EF-1 tornado east of Lansing.

Jody Pollock-Newsom said the barn was on the 40-acre farm her parents bought after marrying in the early 1960s. She said not only was it still a working barn used to store things like hay but one filled with fond memories of her childhood and from watching her now 15-year-old daughter grow up on the farm she and her husband now own.

“It’s a complete loss,” said Pollock-Newsom, executive director of the Michigan Wheat Program, a not-for-profit organization using check-off dollars to further research on achieving higher wheat yields and quality.

She said her family was watching the men’s basketball team from Michigan State University play in the NCAA tournament when the TV broadcast switched to a weather bulletin about severe storms approaching.

The family made sure all their 26 head of sheep and four ponies were inside the barn and their 30 chickens were in the coop.

Pollock-Newsom said even her two barn cats apparently sensed danger and came up to the front door of the house and walked inside.

After the rain started coming down in sheets, she said everyone took cover in the basement, including their Blue Heeler farm dog who nervously hid under a couch. “It was almost like a wall of rain,” she said.

After the worst of the storm passed, Pollock-Newsom said everything outside seemed fine until they went upstairs and looked through a window to see “part of the barn is gone. Holy cow.”

The storm debris included sheets of metal and shingles strewn on the ground from the roof, along with beams from the partially collapsed structure.

Pollock-Newsom said the beams contained wood pegs and metal rectangular shaped nails, which were commonly used in 1800s construction.

Three huge trees were also down in the lot where her farm animals go for food and water. She said it was still raining heavily when her neighbors came over and helped them retrieve all the animals from what was left of the barn. None of the animals were hurt.

The day after the same storm, northern Indiana farmer Steve Holifield was traveling in the small community of Fish Lake where he estimated 70 or more trees were down. He was taking a load of straw about 30 miles away to Rochester, but had to stop for a utility pole that had fallen across both lanes of Indiana 4.

“People lost their trampolines, dollhouses and there was even roofs torn off some of the structures down there, too,” he said.

Another storm-related death happened near Valparaiso, Ind., when a tractor trailer was blown over while traveling on the property of Pratt Industries, a maker of corrugated packaging. Porter County Police said the driver, Jagbir Singh, 34, of Ontario, Canada, was dead at the scene.