This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/17/us/north-texas-tornado.html

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
At Least 6 Killed in North Texas Tornado A Tornado’s Mad Dash, and Then Ruins
(about 7 hours later)
GRANBURY, Tex. — Officials in North Texas said Thursday that they were no longer searching for survivors after a mile-wide tornado touched down here, killing at least six people and injuring dozens of others. GRANBURY, Tex. — “There used to be a house there.”
At least seven other people were listed as missing. Wayne McKethan, Granbury’s city manager, pointed at a bare slab surrounded by debris, all that was left Thursday after a tornado tore through the Rancho Brazos subdivision.
The National Weather Service said that as many as 10 tornadoes may have struck towns south of Fort Worth beginning Wednesday evening. A precise count was to be made available later Thursday, the weather service said. It was one of at least 10 tornadoes that hit North Texas overnight, but this one killed at least six people and left 97 of the 110 houses and trailer homes in the neighborhood badly damaged or destroyed. Hunks of sheet metal had molded themselves around splintered trees and could be seen hanging from power lines, and the only question for some of the officials here is how anyone escaped alive.
Granbury, about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth, was the hardest hit area, accounting for the vast majority of the dead and injured, said Sheriff Roger Deeds of Hood County. Names of the victims have not yet been released, but the six confirmed dead were all adults, officials said. “You’re amazed at how many people got out of it,” said Nin Hulett, the mayor pro tem of Granbury. “It makes you just want to get on your knees and pray.” The subdivision is technically outside of the city limits, he said, but “we’re one big family out here.”
In Rancho Brazos, a subdivision a few miles southeast of Granbury, more than half the homes were flattened, had roofs torn off or walls knocked down, or were simply torn from foundations, officials said. Tornadoes touched down in the towns of Cleburne and Millsap and across the region around Dallas and Fort Worth, leaving damaged homes and an altered landscape. The National Weather Service classified the Granbury storm as an EF-4, meaning that it estimated the wind speed at 166 to 200 miles per hour — the kind of wind that drives two-by-four planks through roofs and tosses real pickups like Tonka trucks.
“Most all of that is heavily damaged to totally destroyed,” Sheriff Deeds said Thursday at a news conference. “It’s definitely a nightmare.” Officials said 19 houses in Rancho Brazos were destroyed, and 17 suffered major damage; 42 more had either minor damage or shingles and windows blown away. Seventeen mobile homes were destroyed, and two had minor damage.
Steve Berry, a Hood County commissioner who worked as a firefighter for 23 years, said that during a tour of the neighborhood of modular, mobile and wood-frame homes, he had witnessed “total devastation.” On Thursday morning, Dr. Kyle McCombs, an emergency room physician at the Lake Granbury Medical Center, where he is also chief of staff, was sitting in his Chevrolet Suburban as he waited for a street to be reopened near the Rancho Brazos neighborhood. The police had blocked roads in the area because of downed power lines.
He estimated that more than 100 homes had been damaged. Dr. McCombs said the emergency room usually saw as many as 65 people a day. When the tornado hit, he said, “we were more than half that all at once.”
Many houses in the subdivision, had been built in recent years by Habitat for Humanity. Mr. Berry said the houses had been tossed around so violently that they now looked “like Tinkertoys.” “We had serious, major trauma, and a lot of it,” he said. “It’s a real mess.”
At sunrise on Thursday, teams of fire crews aided by bulldozers and other heavy equipment began picking through rubble to determine if anyone was trapped, while electric crews worked to restore power. Patients came in with severe lacerations and broken bones, including spinal fractures and skull fractures. Some they treated, others they sent off to Fort Worth trauma centers for more extensive treatment.
A few hours later, Wayne McKethan, the city manager, said that all the survivors had been found with the aid of dogs. Many off-duty staff members came in. “That’s what really saved us,” Dr. McCombs said, adding, “We all just started divvying up patients.”
“Search and rescue is over,” Mr. McKethan said. “We’re now in search and recovery” — that is, searching for the dead. Roger Deeds, the Hood County Sheriff, said of the largely Hispanic Rancho Brazos subdivision, “This was a nice, quiet neighborhood years ago — it was just old mobile homes.” Habitat for Humanity bought land and put up dozens of homes. “It was getting better all the time,” Sheriff Deeds said. “Until last night.”
He pointed to a bare slab. “There used to be a house there,” he said. He had seen destructive tornadoes before, he said, but “I hoped I’d never live to experience it in my own community.”
Access to the area was restricted Thursday because propane tanks had not been secured and wreckage had not been cleared. Among the damage, Mr. Berry said, was a water tower that “imploded.” Surveying the shattered landscape on a bus tour arranged for reporters, Mr. Hulett sounded an optimistic note. “We’ll recover,” he said “We’ve got people who are coming out of the woodwork from all over the place to help us.” Donations are being coordinated by a local group, Mission Granbury.
Bits of sheet metal hung from power lines and wrapped around trees, some of which had been stripped of leaves and branches so that they resembled toothpicks. But Steve Berry, a Hood County commissioner, observed that “six families will never recover: they lost loved ones.” Cadaver dogs were being brought in to look for seven people who were still unaccounted for, he said.
The first storms arrived in the area Wednesday about 6:30 p.m., bringing hard rain and a barrage of baseball-size hail, according to the National Weather Service. About an hour and a half later, at 8:10 p.m., the weather service issued a tornado warning and local officials began evacuating residents to shelters. People had about 20 minutes to make it to safety, officials said. “Search and rescue is over,” Mr. McKethan said. “We’re now in search and recovery” — that is, looking for the dead.
Mr. Berry said that he had believed that the severe weather had bypassed Granbury without causing significant damage when “the storm seemed to pass and back up on top of us.” In an afternoon news conference, Sheriff Deeds said that four men and two women were among the dead, and that there were still six or seven people not accounted for. “We’re going to keep on looking,” he said. “We’re not going to give up til every piece of debris has been turned over.”
On Thursday morning, Kyle McCombs, an emergency room physician at the Lake Granbury Medical Center, where he is also chief of staff, was sitting in his Chevrolet Suburban as he waited for a street to be reopened near the Rancho Brazos neighborhood. The police had blocked roads in the area because of downed power lines. While people might be eager to cross police lines and return to their homes, he said, “those homes that are standing are unlivable, for the most part,” with no power or water.
Dr. McCombs said he had worked overnight in the emergency room. Granbury, a town of 8,000, sits about 35 miles southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth. Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement saying he was “deeply saddened by the deaths caused by yesterday’s horrific storms.”
“It’s a real mess,” he said. “We saw the storm coming in and knew there was tornadic activity.” “The thoughts of 26 million Texans are with those suffering today,” Mr. Perry said, “along with our prayers for a quick and full recovery for those still hospitalized, and for this community as a whole.”
At about 8 p.m., he said, administrators had sounded a “code black,” or severe weather alert, with instructions to move patients to interior hallways and away from windows. Sheriff Deeds credited an early warning system, Code Red, with saving lives. The system made 18,000 phone calls within minutes to homes in the area ten to fifteen minutes before the funnel touched down, he said.
Soon after, he said, ambulances started arriving with injured people. “It’s always better to get notified,” he said.
“We had serious, major trauma, and a lot of it,” said Dr. McCombs, 47. “For a hospital of our size, we’ve never seen a mass trauma event like this.” For some in the subdivision, however, the first warning they received was the emergency siren, just a few minutes before the tornado hit. Lucio Gamez pushed his family into a closet under mattresses, his wife, Beatrice, said.
The emergency room typically sees as many as 65 people a day, he said, but on Wednesday night, “we were more than half that all at once.” When the storm had passed, they stepped out of the closet and looked up. “We saw sky,” she said. Half of the roof was gone. and windows were broken.
Dr. McCombs said patients had come with a broad range of injuries, including severe lacerations and spinal and skull fractures. “Everything was everywhere,” she said. “You couldn’t tell what was what. We had to jump out through the window” to get out of the house.
He said many staff members had come in “off duty to assist. That’s what really saved us.” Lucio Gamez’s son Frank, who lives a few blocks away, found them. He had put his family under a tipped-over sofa to get through the tornado; his house suffered less damage than his father’s, and he began searching the neighborhood for survivors.
He added, “We all just started divvying up patients.” “We knew our family was O.K.” he said. “We wanted to help other families, because everyone is real close.”
About a dozen people with more serious injuries were transferred to hospital trauma centers in Fort Worth, he said. He found one friend dead, and some people who were injured, including a friend who could not move his legs, and a neighbor’s foot was hanging at a bizarre angle. He carted them out to the American Legion Hall, which had been turned into an emergency command center, in his big Silverado pickup, the four-wheel drive vehicle rolling slowly over debris. “It’s just the neighbor thing to do,” he said.
Frank Gamez’s aunt and uncle, Connie and Allan Zapata, were visiting friends outside of the tornado’s destructive path when they heard about it. They raced back to their neighborhood and met up with family. They wondered about their own home, which they had yet to see.
“It’s a mobile home,” Allan Zapata said, then said, “was.”

Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York.

Timothy Williams contributed reporting from New York.