The Associated Press / A storm-damaged Tholens’ Landscape & Garden center is in ruins Wednesday in the aftermath of a powerful storm that ripped through the area a day earlier in Kankakee, Ill.

KANKAKEE, Ill. — Major storms whipped up tornadoes that killed at least two people in northwest Indiana and leveled buildings in Kankakee, Illinois, authorities said Wednesday, as another round of rain, hail and strong winds made its way through the region.

Several intense supercell thunderstorms moved across northern Illinois and northwestern Indiana the previous day, including one responsible for at least four tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service office in Chicago.

The Newton County Coroner’s office said Edward L. Kozlowski, 89, and his wife Arlene Kozlowski, 84, were killed when a tornado struck their home in Lake Village, in northwestern Indiana. The couple appeared to have been killed by blunt force trauma, the coroner’s office said, and an autopsy was scheduled for Friday.

“They were wonderful, just really wonderful human beings,” son-in-law Steve Rehfeldt told CBS News in Chicago. “You know, tough old guy and sweet old lady.”

They left behind four children, seven grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The storms shattered windows, tore off roofs and smashed vehicles in Kankakee, Illinois. Wood planks and other debris littered yards, streets and parking lots. A landscape and garden center was seriously damaged, some parts completely destroyed.

Storms also dropped 1 to 2 inches of rain and left piles of hail in the Grand Rapids area in western Michigan, said Alex Manion, a weather service meteorologist in Detroit. Streets flooded, swamping cars with water above their doors in some places.

The weather service said crews were determining the strength and number of tornadoes, and parts of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio remained under a tornado watch Wednesday.

Suspected tornadoes last week killed four people in southwestern Michigan and two in eastern Oklahoma.

A tornado leaves a small Indiana community in tatters

In Lake Village, where the Kozlowskis died, crews rescued some people who were trapped in damaged homes. At least 70 utility poles were knocked down and many roads were rendered unpassable, Newton County officials said.

“Please do not come here. Do not try to help right now,” Sheriff Shannon Cothran said in a video shot in front of a destroyed home.

Laurie Postma, a spokesperson for the Lake Township Volunteer Fire Department, said the storm injured fewer than 10 people in Lake Village. Cothran said no other significant injuries had been reported but search and rescue operations were continuing.

Lake Village is about 60 miles southeast of Chicago and 25 miles east of Kankakee.

David Ferris of Lake Village said he, his wife, and their dogs “rode it out in our downstairs bathtub.” They were unscathed, except for losing power. Ferris, who is a paramedic, helped rescue and treat injured people.

“We had another house where a guy crawled out,” Ferris said. “He was having some trouble breathing because he was covered in house insulation.”

Ferris said a Family Dollar store and a gas station were destroyed, and multiple large trees were uprooted.

Jennifer Telford, 49, said she hid in her basement in Lake Village while she followed news reports of the storm. She did not hear the tornado, which struck to the south, but heard the hail pelting her roof.

“The siren in town didn’t go off,” she said. “The sirens outside town did.”

The power was back on in the morning at the truck stop where she works, but elsewhere, “everything is closed due to the downed trees and power lines.”

About 4,300 customers in Lake Village and surrounding communities were without power late Wednesday morning, down from more than 11,000 at the peak of the storm, the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. reported.