LIVONIA (WWJ) -- The National Weather Service has confirmed a tornado touched down Wednesday afternoon in Livonia, and authorities say a young child was killed when a tree crashed through a home.
Livonia was among the hardest hit areas of Metro Detroit on Wednesday as storms caused damage and left tens of thousands of people without power across the region.
A spokesperson for the city of Livonia confirmed to WWJ a 3-year-old boy was killed when a tree crashed through a home on Houghton Street, near Newburgh and Schoolcraft. The child's mother was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
A 2-week-old infant also inside the home at the time was uninjured, fire officials said.
Livonia Fire Department crews were called to the home shortly before 3:40 p.m. after getting reports of the tree into the house.
"Upon arrival at the scene they found a massive hardwood tree had been uprooted and fell onto the house and through the roof, landing on the bed where a mother and her 2-year-old were laying down," the department said in a statement.
Fire officials said all available units in the city were dispatched to the scene and a special call for Western Wayne Search and Rescue was made. Crews "worked tirelessly" for nearly an hour to remove the roof and parts of the tree. They then lifted the tree with high pressure air bags and extricated the victims.
The low EF-1 tornado packed winds of more than 90 mph and touched down near Rotary Park, in the area of 6 Mile and Merriman, Alex Mannion of the National Weather Service told WWJ. The park is about two miles away from the house where the child was killed.
Wednesday's tornado came with little warning. The National Weather Service did not issue a Tornado Watch or Warning, or a Severe Thunderstorm Warning.
Brian Kahn, director of Emergency Management and Homeland Security for the city of Livonia, told WWJ "everything happened so fast" and it made the process of issuing an alert difficult.
"Even talking to the National Weather Service, this was so fast, there was not necessarily even time to do that and find out if it met the threshold of the criteria that would set them off," Kahn said.
"There's a bunch of different variables that come into play in how the reports come in, whether its from a public safety officer or a trained weather spotter if they see something or if we get information from the National Weather Service," Kahn added. "But then you have events like this that are very, very unpredictable."
Donations are being accepted to help the family, and to support Livonia first responders, at this link.
DTE Energy was reporting just under 30,000 homes and businesses across the Metro Detroit area lost power after the storms rolled through.
More than 3,000 customers were without power in Livonia, where the tornado brought down multiple trees and power lines and caused damage to the roof of a picnic area at the popular Rotary Park.
Other areas hard-hit by power outages included Madison Heights, Clawson, Belleville and Wayne. Thursday morning, the DTE total was down to 14,000.
Livonia wasn't the only area city to see damage from Wednesday's storms. In Farmington Hills, a Citgo gas station overhang collapsed in the area of 10 Mile and Middlebelt Roads.
Police officials told WWJ's Luke Sloan strong winds caused the overhang to come crashing down around 3:45 p.m., causing a gas pump to catch fire. It has since been put out.
Two cars with people inside were underneath the overhang at the time it collapsed. Fire Chief Jon Unruh told WWJ the awning fortunately did not fall directly on the cars.
"They received some sort of real brief warning and the occupants ran from underneath it before it collapsed," Unruh said, noting one person was taken to the hospital as a precaution to be treated for "very minor injuries" sustained while running away.
There were also reports of flooding across Metro Detroit throughout Wednesday evening.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated that the child who died was 2 years old. The article has been edited to reflect that the boy was 3, based on corrected information from authorities.