Violent thunderstorms and tornadoes ripped across the Southeast and the nation’s midsection Friday night causing a swath of destruction from Indiana to Alabama to Kentucky and leaving at least 14 dead in Indiana.

The Vicksburg area fared much better, despite early warnings of baseball-sized hail and tornadoes in northern Warren County.

“We dodged a bullet,” Warren County Emergency Management director John Elfer said. “It could have been much worse.”

Damage from the storm was confined to an area north of Vicksburg to the Issaquena County line. Issaquena officials reported no damage Friday night.

The biggest reported problem in Warren County was a tree entangled with electrical wires on Youngton Road near Rawhide Road. Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said county road crews and crews from Yazoo Valley Electric Power Association were on the scene about 9:30 p.m. Information on power outages in the area was unavailable. Another tree was later reported down at Youngton and Henry roads.

Power lines also were reported down in the Rollingwood Drive area in Oak Ridge Subdivision. Information on the number of outages caused by the downed lines was unavailable, but Entergy’s power outage website indicated that up about 50 customers might have been affected.

The storm hit about 7:15 p.m. Elfer said National Weather Service radar indicated rotation in the storm cell in an area between Redwood and Blakely Subdivision, but there were no reports of damage or of a tornado touching down.

He said wind blew a tree down on North Washington Street, and several weather-related accidents were reported across the county, but initial information indicated there were no injuries. One of the accidents, he said, occurred when a car hit the fallen tree on North Washington.

Throughout the state, tornado warnings cropped up mostly in Northeast Mississippi, but by late evening the state had been spared the deadly and damaging weather that had hit other parts of the country.

Powerful storms leveled small towns in southern Indiana, transforming entire blocks of homes into piles of debris, tossing school buses into a home and a restaurant and causing destruction so severe it was difficult to tell what was once there. As night fell, dazed residents shuffled through town, some looking for relatives, while rescue workers searched the rubble for survivors. Without power, the only light in town came from cars that crawled down the streets.

From the Gulf Coast to the Great Lakes, the storms touched nearly all walks of life. A fire station was flattened. Roofs were ripped off schools. A prison fence was knocked down and scores of homes and businesses were destroyed. At least 27 people were killed, including 14 in Indiana, and dozens of others were hurt in the second deadly tornado outbreak this week.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were missing.

The threat of tornadoes was expected to last until late Friday for parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Ohio. Forecasters at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said the massive band of storms put 10 million people at high risk of dangerous weather.

“We knew this was coming. We were watching the weather like everyone else,” said Clark County, Ind., Sheriff Danny Rodden. “This was the worst case scenario. There’s no way you can prepare for something like this.”

In Henryville, the scene was eerie and somewhat chaotic. Cell phones and landlines were not working. Hundreds of firefighters and police zipped around town. Power lines were down and cars were flipped over. People walked down the street with shopping carts full of water and food, handing it out to whoever was in need.

Terry Brishaber said his uncle’s mobile home was gone.

“I don’t see any remnants. I don’t know where it’s at,” he said.

Aerial footage from a TV news helicopter flying over Henryville showed numerous wrecked houses, some with their roofs torn off and many surrounded by debris. The video shot by WLKY in Louisville, Ky., also showed a mangled school bus protruding from the side of a one-story building and dozens of overturned semis strewn around the smashed remains of a truck stop.

“I’m a storm chaser,” said Susie Renner of Henryville, “and I have never been this frightened before.”

An Associated Press reporter in Henryville said the high school was destroyed and the second floor had been ripped off the middle school next door. Authorities said school was in session when the tornado hit, but there were only minor injuries there.

Classroom chairs were scattered on the ground outside, trees were uprooted and cars had huge dents from baseball-sized hail.

Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport was closed temporarily because of debris on the runways, but one of three runways had reopened by late afternoon. A fire station was flattened and several barns were toppled in northern Kentucky across the Ohio River from the badly damaged Indiana towns.

The outbreak also was causing problems in Alabama and Tennessee where dozens of houses were damaged. It comes two days after an earlier round of storms killed 13 people in the Midwest and South.

At least 20 homes were ripped off their foundation and eight people were injured in the Chattanooga, Tenn., area after strong winds and hail lashed the area. To the east in Cleveland, Blaine Lawson and his wife Billie were watching the weather when the power went out. Just as they began to seek shelter, strong winds ripped the roof off their home. Neither was hurt.

“It just hit all at once,” said Blaine Lawson, 76. “Didn’t have no warning really. The roof, insulation and everything started coming down on us. It just happened so fast that I didn’t know what to do. I was going to head to the closet but there was just no way. It just got us.”