Tornadoes Kill 6 in Illinois Nov. 18, 2013 - Recovery operations are underway after severe storms and tornadoes wreaked havoc on the Midwest, killing at least six people and injuring dozens more after powerful winds flattened homes and decimated much of the town of Washington, Ill. A sixth death was confirmed late Monday night after 77 reports of tornadoes ripped through the Midwest earlier in the day. One of the tornadoes in New Minden, Ill., was estimated to be an EF 4 with winds up to 200 mph. Jonathon Monken, the director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency said a third person was confirmed dead Monday night in Massac County. An elderly couple was killed in Nashville, Ill., and another person was killed in Washington. The town of Washington, a rural community of 16,000, appeared to have been one of the hardest hit. Rows of homes were completely flattened, trees uprooted and cars turned upside down. I crawled into my kitchen and the whole roof came off. My table went sideways, my glass doors blew in, my house is devastated and [I] still can't find my cat," Washington resident Alicia Bachman told ABC News Radio. The wall of my fireplace is all that is left of my house," Michael Perdun told The Associated Press. Washington Mayor Gary Manier was in church when the tornado ripped through the town. Mainer quickly sprang into action and ushered people to safety. "I was in church and I actually had our worshipers go to the basement and I'm sure some of them probably thought I was off my rocker but you know a lot of times churches don't necessarily do tornado drills and fire drills like schools and businesses," Manier told ABC News Radio. Manier said he was grateful he spent so much time going over emergency preparedness disaster plans. "I was in church and I actually had our worshipers go to the basement and I'm sure some of them probably thought I was off my rocker, but you know a lot of times churches don't necessarily do tornado drills and fire drills like schools and businesses," he said. Illinois State Trooper Dustin Pierce said the tornado cut a path from one end of town to the other, knocking down power lines, rupturing gas lines and ripping off roofs. There's a lot of power lines down. Some of them might be live. There's a lot of gas leaks still. So we really need people to stay back," Pierce told ABC News Radio. "There's a lot of homes affected by this including a lot of multi-family homes, apartment buildings, things like that, so they're still going through those areas you know searching looking for injured people," he added The tornado that ripped through Washington was part of a massive storm system that tore across Illinois around noon Monday, causing widespread damage and forcing officials to evacuate the crowd of approximately 60,000 at Chicago's Soldier Field during a Bears football game. The storm also slammed through parts of Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky as it made its way east into the mid-Atlantic states on Sunday night. ABC News Radio and The Associated Press contributed to this report.