At Least 6 Killed in North Texas Tornado
Mike Fuentes/Associated Press
Miguel Morales, who was injured in a tornado, was carried to an ambulance on Wednesday in Granbury, Texas.
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: May 16, 2013
Rescue workers combed through what remained of a North Texas subdivision Thursday morning as they searched for survivors after a mile-wide tornado ripped through the area, killing six people and injuring at least 37 others.
The National Weather Service said Thursday that as many as 10 tornadoes may have struck towns south of Fort Worth beginning Wednesday evening.
Granbury, about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth, appeared to be among the hardest hit areas, officials said, accounting for most of the dead and injured so far, according to Sheriff Roger Deeds of Hood County. Seven people remained missing Thursday morning.
More than 90 people have been evacuated from Rancho Brazos, a subdivision a few miles southeast of Granbury, where at least 50 of some 110 homes were flattened, had roofs torn off, or were ripped from foundations, officials said.
“Most all of that is heavily damaged to totally destroyed,” Sheriff Deeds said at a news conference. “It’s definitely a nightmare.”
Many of the homes in the subdivision had been built in recent years by Habitat for Humanity.
Names of the victims have not yet been released, but the six dead were all adults, officials said.
At sunrise on Thursday morning, teams of fire crews from around the region picked through rubble to determine if anyone was trapped and electric crews were working to restore power.
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 local shelters. People had about 20 minutes to make it to safety, officials said.
Sheriff Hood said he had originally hoped the county would be spared and the storm would pass without developing into a more dangerous weather system.
“I thought we were going to squeak by,” he said.
But, he said that once he was made aware of the size of the storm, “we knew it was going to be a long night in Hood County.”
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