Washington, Ill., firefighters stand in the middle of Devonshire Street on the North side of Washington, Ill., after a tornado leveled at least fifty homes, Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. High winds that followed the tornado are causing danger as homeowners and emergency workers try to search homes. AP Photo/The Pantagraph, Steve Smedley Ray Baughman embraces family shortly after his home was destroyed by a tornado that left a path of devastation through the north end of Pekin, Il., Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. Intense thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across the Midwest on Sunday, causing extensive damage in several central Illinois communities while sending people to their basements for shelter. An Ameren Illinois worker walks past homes looking for gas and electrical hazards in Washington, Ill., Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. Intense thunderstorms and tornadoes swept across the Midwest, causing extensive damage in several central Illinois communities while sending people to their basements for shelter. Pat Whitaker, 82, sits under a blanket in her nightgown outside her home waiting for help to come in Gifford, Ill. on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. AP Photo/The News-Gazette, Robin Scholz Aimee Royer holds a dog she rescued from debris after a Sunday morning tornado sliced through a subdivision on the North side of Washington, Ill., Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. Royer and her friend, Kendra Gray, at right, said their home was spared. Several homes are cleared down to the foundation. (AP) - Dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms swept across the Midwest on Sunday, unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighborhoods, flipping over cars, uprooting trees and leaving at least five people dead. Illinois took the brunt of the fury as the string of unusually powerful late-season tornadoes tore across the state, injuring dozens and even prompting officials at Chicago's Soldier Field to evacuate the stands and delay the Bears game. The whole neighborhood's gone. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house," said Michael Perdun, speaking by cellphone from the hard-hit central Illinois town of Washington, where he said his neighborhood was wiped out in a matter of seconds. I stepped outside and I heard it coming. My daughter was already in the basement, so I ran downstairs and grabbed her, crouched in the laundry room and all of a sudden I could see daylight up the stairway and my house was gone. An elderly man and his sister were killed when a tornado hit their home in the rural southern Illinois community of New Minden, said coroner Mark Styninger. A third person died in Washington, while two others perished in Massac county in the far southern part of the state, said Patti Thompson of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. She did not provide details. With communications difficult and many roads impassable, it remained unclear how many people were killed or hurt. The Illinois National Guard said it had dispatched 10 firefighters and three vehicles to Washington to assist with immediate search and recovery operations. In the rural community of 16,000, whole blocks of houses were erased from the landscape and Illinois State Police Trooper Dustin Pierce said the tornado cut a path from one end of town to the other, knocking down power lines, uprooting trees and rupturing gas lines. An auto parts store with several people inside was reduced to a pile of bricks, metal and rebar; a battered car, its windshield impaled by a piece of lumber, was flung alongside it. Despite the devastation, all the employees managed to crawl out of the rubble unhurt, Pierce said. "I went over there immediately after the tornado, walking through the neighborhoods, and I couldn't even tell what street I was on," Washington Alderman Tyler Gee told WLS-TV. Just completely flattened - some of the neighborhoods here in town, hundreds of homes. Among those who lost everything was Curt Zehr, who described the speed with which the tornado turned his farmhouse outside Washington into a mass of rubble scattered over hundreds of yards. His truck was sent flying and landed on an uprooted tree. "They heard the siren... and saw (the tornado) right there and got into the basement," he said of his wife and adult son who were home at the time. Then, seconds later, when they looked out from their hiding place the house was gone and "the sun was out and right on top of them." At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, spokeswoman Amy Paul said 37 patients had been treated, eight with injuries ranging from broken bones to head injuries that were serious enough to be admitted. Another hospital, Methodist Medical Center in Peoria, treated more than a dozen, but officials there said none of them were seriously injured. Steve Brewer, Methodist Medical Center's chief operating officer, said doctors and other medical professionals were setting up a temporary emergency care center to treat the injured before transporting them to hospitals, while others were dispatched to search through the rubble for survivors. By nightfall, Trooper Pierce said there were reports of looting in Washington. About 90 minutes after the tornado destroyed homes in Washington, the storm darkened downtown Chicago. As the rain and high winds slammed into the area, officials at Soldier Field evacuated the stands and ordered the Bears and Baltimore Ravens off the field. Fans were allowed back to their seats shortly after 2 p.m., and the game resumed after about a two-hour delay. Earlier, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications had issued a warning to fans, urging them "to take extra precautions and ... appropriate measures to ensure their personal safety." Just how many tornadoes hit was unclear. According to the National Weather Services' website, a total of 65 tornadoes had struck, the bulk of them in Illinois. But meteorologist Matt Friedlein said the total might fall because emergency workers, tornado spotters and others often report the same tornado. Still, when the weather service was issuing its warning that severe weather was bearing down on the Midwest, officials said the last such warning issued so late in the season in November came in 2005, and the result was an outbreak of 49 tornadoes. The storm followed warnings by the weather service that the storm was simply moving too fast for people to wait until they saw it to get ready. "Our primary message is this is a dangerous weather system that has the potential to be extremely deadly and destructive," said Laura Furgione, deputy director of the National Weather Service National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hours later, at 11 a.m., weather service officials confirmed a tornado had touched down near the central Illinois community of East Peoria, about 150 miles southwest of Chicago. Within an hour, tornadoes were reported in Washington, Metamora, Morton and other central Illinois communities. Some 53 million people in 10 states were "at significant risk for thunderstorms and tornadoes," he said. The White House issued a statement saying President Barack Obama had been briefed about the damage and was in touch with federal, state and local officials. Such severe weather this late in the season also carries the risk of surprise. "People can fall into complacency because they don't see severe weather and tornadoes, but we do stress that they should keep a vigilant eye on the weather and have a means to hear a tornado warning because things can change very quickly," said Matt Friedlein, a weather service meteorologist. According to agency officials, parts of Illinois, Indiana, southern Michigan and western Ohio were at the greatest risk of seeing tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds throughout the day Sunday. Many of the storms were expected to become super cells, with the potential to produce tornadoes, large hail and destructive winds. But he said temperatures Sunday were expected to reach into the 60s and 70s, which he said is warm enough to help produce severe weather when it is coupled with winds, which are typically stronger this time of year than in the summer. In fact, tornadoes this time of year happen more often than people might realize, he said, pointing to a twister that hit the Rockford, Ill., area in November 2010. Babwin reported from Chicago. Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.