Friends and neighbors comb the rubble of Curt Zehr's home just outside Washington, Ill., on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. Zehr's wife and adult son took shelter in the basement at the base of the pictured stairs as a tornado destroyed their farm house. They were not injured. The tornado cut a path of destruction through Washington. A man stands near a pickup that belonged to farmer Curt Zehr after a tornado blew through Zehr's farm on Sunday, Nov. 17. The farm destroyed Zehr's home just outside Washington, Ill., and caused extensive damage in the town. Zehr's wife and son were at home at the time but were not injured. Dozens of Zehr's friends and neighbors helped look through the rubble. A young boy takes a break from helping comb the rubble of Curt Zehr's home just outside Washington, Ill., on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. Zehr's wife and adult son took shelter in their basement as a tornado destroyed their farm house they were not injured. A neighborhood in the Devonshire subdivision of Washington, Ill., is left in ruins after a tornado tore through the northern part of the town on Sunday, Nov. 17, 2013. (AP) - As a powerful tornado bore down on their Illinois farmhouse, Curt Zehr's wife and adult son didn't have time to do anything but scramble down the stairs into their basement. Uninjured, the pair looked out moments later to find the house gone and the sun out and "right on top" of them, Zehr said. The home on the outskirts of Washington, Ill., was swept up and scattered over hundreds of yards by one of the dozens of tornadoes and intense thunderstorms that swept across the Midwest on Sunday, leaving at least six people dead and unleashing powerful winds that flattened entire neighborhoods, flipped over cars and uprooted trees. "They saw (the tornado) right there and got in the basement," said a stunned Zehr, pointing to the farm field near the rubble that had been his home. Entire blocks in Washington were leveled. Other area towns were heavily damaged, too, and officials at Chicago's Soldier Field evacuated the stands and delayed the Bears-Baltimore Ravens game. The wave of thunderstorms that brought the damaging winds and tornadoes affected 12 states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and western New York. Bill Bunting, forecast operations chief of the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said the storms were part of the same system and would be "moving rapidly to the east and continue east overnight and into the morning." Illinois was struck the hardest by the unusually powerful late-season tornadoes. At least six were killed and dozens more injured, though with communications difficult and many roads impassable, it remained unclear how many people might be hurt or whether the death toll would continue to climb. An elderly man and his sister were killed when a tornado hit their home in the rural southern Illinois community of New Minden, coroner Mark Styninger said. A third person died in Washington, while three others perished in Massac County in the far southern part of the state, said Patti Thompson of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Washington, a town of 16,000 about 140 miles southwest of Chicago, appeared to have the most severe damage. The tornado cut a path about an eighth of a mile wide from one side of town to the other, State Trooper Dustin Pierce said. Across farm fields a little more than a mile from where Zehr's home was swept up, several blocks of homes in one neighborhood were destroyed. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house," said Michael Perdun, speaking by cellphone. As law enforcement officers continued to search for victims and sized up the cleanup and rebuilding job ahead, they kept everyone but residents and emergency workers out. With power off and lines down in many areas, natural gas lines leaking and trees and other debris blocking many streets, an overnight curfew kept all but emergency vehicles off pitch-black roads. The only lights visible across most of Washington on Sunday night were red and blue flashes from police and fire truck lights. Still, by nightfall Trooper Pierce said there were reports of looting around town. As Zehr worked with about 75 friends and neighbors to try to salvage anything from his home - dining room chairs and other odds and ends - he said he'd been at church while his wife, Sue, and son were at home when the tornado hit. They had homeowners' insurance, which he said he hoped was good. "We're about to find out," he said. A friend, Keith Noe, said the Zehr family still felt fortunate. "They both walked out of the basement and that's what counts," Noe said. Across Washington, 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. "The employees were climbing out of this," Pierce said, gesturing to the rubble behind him. None of them was seriously injured, he said. At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in nearby Peoria, spokeswoman Amy Paul said 37 patients had been treated, eight with injuries ranging from broken bones to head injuries. About 90 minutes after the tornado destroyed homes in Washington, the stormy weather darkened downtown Chicago. Although about 80 reports of tornadoes had come in as of Sunday night, the National Weather Service's Bunting said the actual number will likely be in the 30 to 40 range. He said that's because the same tornado often gets reported multiple times. Weather service meteorologist Matt Friedlein said that such strong storms are rare this late in the year because there usually isn't enough heat from the sun to sustain the thunderstorms. "You don't need temperatures in the 80s and 90s to produce severe weather (because) the strong winds compensate for the lack of heating," Friedlein said. Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen and Andale Gross in Chicago, Ken Kusmer and Tom LoBianco in Indianapolis, Ed White in Detroit and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report.