A fierce weekend storm killed three children when a tree fell on their van in Michigan and also killed an 84-year-old man in an Amish buggy in Indiana, authorities said on March 30, 2025. The same weather system left more than 400,000 power outages across Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin.
In Kalamazoo County, the victims were a 2-year-old girl, her 4-year-old brother and their 11-year-old cousin. Three other people were injured. Sheriff Richard Fuller said the family could not have avoided the tree, which came across two lanes of traffic and struck the passenger area of the van.
The storm also knocked out power across Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula and forced schools, churches and fire halls that still had electricity to open as warming centers. By Monday afternoon, roughly 276,000 outages remained in Michigan, with about 80,000 each in Indiana and Wisconsin. Utilities were still restoring service as freezing rain and wind damage lingered.
In Indiana, police said an Amish buggy flipped in Middlebury because of intense winds, killing Lonnie Yoder. Investigators in Valparaiso also believed severe crosswinds blew over a tractor-trailer, killing the driver, while a warehouse in Elkhart was destroyed. In Ohio, storms toppled a church steeple, damaged homes and flipped campers; at least four tornadoes were confirmed.
The damage spread beyond roads and homes. The Mackinac Bridge between Michigan's peninsulas was shut because of the danger of thick ice falling from the towers and cables. In Alpena, one newspaper could not publish because of the power loss. The AP report showed a storm system that was both deadly and disruptive, with hundreds of thousands left without electricity and local responders juggling outages, blocked roads and shelter needs.
The weather shifted east after the weekend, but the aftermath was still being counted. The report pointed to a broad pattern of late-winter severe weather that can turn a single storm into a regional emergency, especially where ice, wind and falling trees intersect on rural roads and older infrastructure.
Michigan bore the brunt of the outages, with power loss turning schools, churches and fire halls into warming centers while linemen worked through frozen branches and damaged lines. The fact that 276,000 outages still remained there on Monday afternoon showed how deeply the storm had cut into daily life, especially in smaller communities where electricity restoration can take longer.
The rest of the region was also dealing with dangerous aftershocks of the weather. In Indiana, the storm tore through an Amish buggy, flipped a tractor-trailer and destroyed a warehouse, while in Ohio it toppled a church steeple and damaged homes. The closure of the Mackinac Bridge added a high-profile reminder that ice and wind can make even major infrastructure vulnerable.
The storm's scale was measured not just in deaths but in disruption. When churches, schools and fire halls become warming centers, residents are forced to treat ordinary civic buildings as emergency shelters. That kind of improvised response is common when ice and wind overwhelm local grids, but the combination of child deaths, bridge closures and 400,000 outages made this one of the region's most punishing cold-weather events of the season.
