Multiple tornadoes impacted areas of Illinois and northwestern Indiana on Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

Tornadoes were confirmed in LaSalle, Livingston and Kankakee counties and in the northern suburb of Bartlett.

The tornadoes were the culmination of a two-day period of severe weather that slammed northern Illinois, damaging homes, businesses and farm fields, knocking down trees and power lines and causing localized flooding.

One tornado hit the Streator area in LaSalle County Thursday around 5:20 p.m., according to witnesses, touching down in a farm field off East 12th Street, prompting residents to take shelter.

As of Thursday night, Streator Mayor Tara Bedei said there were no known fatalities. Several homes did retain significant damage, and one person was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

Emergency crews are advising the public to avoid the most highly impacted areas.

“We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel, both in Streator and regionally,” Bedei wrote in a statement. “Recovery efforts will continue in the coming days, and additional updates will be provided as information becomes available.”

The National Weather Service listed Streator as one of the most heavily impacted areas by this week’s storms along with Merriville and Hebron in Indiana.

Another tornado touched down in Dwight in Livingston County Thursday before moving into Kankakee County near Reddick.

As of Friday morning, no fatalities had been reported, and the damage had not been fully assessed from that storm cell.

The National Weather Service and local emergency management agencies will be doing damage surveys over the coming days to determine the exact number of tornadoes that occurred and their intensity.

Representatives from the Grundy and Kankakee County Emergency Management Agencies did not return Shaw Local’s requests for comment.

While no tornadoes officially touched down in Will County, high winds Wednesday caused property damage in Joliet, Lockport and Crest Hill, as well as widespread power outages in the county.

“Some of the areas in Shorewood and Joliet, including University of St. Francis, were hit pretty hard on Wednesday,” said Will County Emergency Management Agency Director Allison Anderson. “There were a lot of trees knocked down and roofs damaged, but that was the only structural damage we saw.”

University of St. Francis suffered one of the more visible pieces of property damage in the storm, when the steeple of its historic Motherhouse building, which has stood since 1881, was knocked off by intense winds.

Anderson noted that as of Friday morning all the roads in Will County had been cleared of large debris and crews were in the process of removing it from the right of ways.

“We were very lucky to have gotten through this with just some scrapes and bruises,” Anderson said. “Other areas like Streator and Bartlett definitely got the worst of it.”

The National Weather Service on Friday, sent a damage survey crew to Bartlett, which sits on the borders of Cook, DuPage, and Kane counties, and confirmed that an EF-1 tornado had touched down in the community Thursday.

The tornado reportedly touched down in open fields, causing limited damage to surrounding structures.

Several homes sustained damaged in the storm and a BP gas station at the corner of Illinois Route 59 and Stearns Road saw all it’s pumps ripped out of the ground.

Still without power

As of 2 p.m. Friday ComEd reported that while power has been restored to much of their customers who were hit by outages beginning Wednesday, more than 122,000 residents still were without electricity.

Starting Wednesday, the company said over 667,000 customers lost power across northern Illinois.

ComEd’s county-by-county outage tracker showed the counties with the most customer outages remaining on Friday were:

• Cook County: 114,100
• Will County: 3,923
• DuPage County: 3,253
• Lake County: 2,026
• Grundy County: 750
• LaSalle County: 698

Kane, Kendall, Livingston and McHenry counties also were still reporting between 100 and 300 outages each as of Friday afternoon.

ComEd said it is “working aggressively” to restore power to those remaining areas by Saturday night.

In the interim, residents in impacted areas are advised to avoid downed power lines and heavily damaged areas.

Residents using a generator to restore complete or partial power to their homes are also advised to use caution to prevent fires or carbon monoxide poisoning.

The Will County EMA posted online about generator use stating “generators belong outside only – never in a garage, basement, shed or near windows.”

People are advised to keep generators at least 20 feet away from their homes and to use a carbon monoxide detector inside while running the device.

Generators also must be turned off and allowed to cool down before being refueled.

The Will County EMA also warned of the dangers of spoiled food after power outages.

“The big problem we’re facing now is getting power back for everyone,” said Anderson. “We don’t want people eating food that has spoiled without refrigeration.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises that food kept in a refrigerator, like meat, milk and leftovers, can spoil within four to six hours of losing power, while food in a freezer can last 24 to 48 hours.

To keep things fresh for as long as possible, it is advised to keep fridges and freezers closed. More perishable items also can be saved longer if kept at 40 degrees or less in a cooler with ice or frozen gel packs.

The CDC advises that after multiple hours without power have passed to throw away any food from the refrigerator that is highly perishable or which has a strange smell or texture.

Flooding

In addition to the wind damage, the storm systems that moved through the area had many counties under flash flood advisories for large portions of Thursday.

Several areas, including McHenry in McHenry County, Geneva in Kane County, Crete and Frankfort in Will County, and Streator reported localized flooding that temporarily closed roads.

Officials in Will County said the waters had receded by Friday and streets were once again passable.

It is not yet known if significant damage was done to homes or property by the influx of water.