A community whose high school was destroyed the day before graduation by a tornado that killed seven people, including the valedictorian’s father, rescheduled the ceremony as residents sifted through houses in many cases reduced to rubble.

The tornado was part of a line of storms that ripped through the Midwest on Saturday night and Sunday, destroying dozens of homes and an emergency services building in northwest Ohio.

Storms collapsed a movie-theater roof in Illinois and ripped siding off a building at a Michigan nuclear plant, forcing a shutdown. But the worst destruction was reserved for a strip up to 300 yard wide and 10 miles long southeast of Toledo left littered Sunday with wrecked vehicles, splintered wood and family possessions.

The tornado that hit Wood and Ottawa counties had estimated winds of up to 165 mph and was by far the most severe of four confirmed tornadoes to strike northern Ohio on Saturday, Will Kubina, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Cleveland, said Monday.

At least 50 homes were destroyed and another 50 severely damaged, as well as six commercial buildings. The storm fell over an area of farm fields and light industry, narrowly missing the heavily populated suburbs on the southern edge of Toledo.

“It’s a war zone,” Lake Township Police Chief Mark Hummer said.

Hummer said all residents were accounted for after house-to-house searches.

Doug Wensink, 17, who had planned to graduate on Sunday, said the valedictorian lived in a home on a street blocked by fallen tree limbs.

Neighbors dug through a pile of rubble where the house once stood. There was nothing left but the foundation, which was filled with water and debris. A pool table floated in the middle.

Friends cried as they picked the family’s belongings out of the mud and the mangled trees. One girl emerged from the muddy water carrying a teddy bear and a small jewelry box.

Scott Conley said he helped rescue the mother and her three children, who had survived by hiding in the basement. He had arrived at his parents’ house across the street about 20 minutes before the storm hit. He said his family laid in the stairwell because they didn’t have time to get to the basement.

Conley said he saw the body of the children’s father in the rubble after hours of searching. He said the man apparently ran upstairs to get a flashlight and couldn’t make it back to safety.

“You try and tell them, you know, that you’re gonna find their dad,” Conley said, breaking down at the memory of the search. “But we just couldn’t.”

The tornado ripped the roof and back wall off Lake High School’s gymnasium late Saturday, hours before the graduation ceremony was supposed to begin there. The ceremony was rescheduled for Tuesday at a Toledo community college.

The tornado turned a township police and emergency medical services building into a mishmash of 2-by-4 framing and pink insulation. At least six police vehicles — half the township’s fleet — were destroyed, and one car was tossed into the spot where the building once stood.