8 Die as Tornadoes Batter Midwest : Weather: Indiana declares emergency amid heavy damage and many injuries. Illinois is also hard hit in second day of violent storms in nation’s midsection.

INDIANAPOLIS —  A band of tornadoes cut through Indiana on Saturday night, killing at least seven people and injuring at least 125 others, authorities said.

Gov. Evan Bayh declared a state of emergency and dispatched the Indiana National Guard to Bedford and Petersburg, the two hardest hit areas.

The twisters were part of a storm system that stretched from the Great Lakes region to Texas. Dozens of homes were demolished and at least one person was killed by tornadoes in Illinois.

At least four tornadoes skipped across southern and central Indiana.

“It’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this. Everything’s just shut down,” said Randall J. Harris, news director at radio station WFPC in Petersburg.

The city, which is about 30 miles north of Evansville, was in shambles, he said.

The harsh weather came on the heels of a day of violent winds in the Great Plains, where 30 twisters were reported Friday. In one area of West Texas, residents cleaned up from a tornado that killed two people, injured 10 and caused a poisonous gas leak.

Police in Indiana reported homes were knocked off their foundations, electric transformers were toppled and semi-trucks were blown off roads.

Much of southern Indiana was without power Saturday night, authorities said.

In Bedford, where at least two of the deaths occurred, others were reported trapped in their homes.

Heavy thunderstorms slashed a half-dozen counties in the southeastern quarter of Illinois on Saturday.

A tornado touched down in Findlay, causing extensive damage and leaving parts of the town of 800 without power, said a volunteer firefighter, Marsha Allen. “We have 11 homes destroyed, 25 more homes damaged and one trailer destroyed,” she said. “There are two confirmed injuries.”

Lynn Bobo, of the Illinois Emergency Services and Disaster Agency, said a factory near Albion “sustained extensive damage” from high winds. Bobo said several other homes and farm buildings in the affected area of the state suffered wind damage as well.

A woman was killed in Browns when a tornado skirted the rural community, police said.

“We have 30 homes destroyed and extensive damage in Newton,” a state official said.

In western Texas south of Midland, residents of rural Upton County were cleaning up after a tornado Friday night that touched off a series of traffic accidents as it crossed a road, killing two people. It also damaged seven houses, injuring 10 people.

The twister knocked open several wellheads in neighboring Pecos County, causing a leak of poisonous, foul-smelling hydrogen sulfide gas.

Workers from Marathon Oil Co. early Saturday capped the wellheads. There were no evacuations because no one lives in the immediate area.

In Felton, Minn., cleanup crews and residents removed trees and other debris left behind by a twister that roared across the northwestern part of the state Friday night.

Jerry Steinbach said the funnel cloud came within 60 feet of his house.

“It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. It stripped the paint off the side of the house,” Steinbach said.