Tornadoes Saturday kill at least 7, injure about 100 in North Texas, authorities say

The Dallas Morning News has a team of journalists in Valley View on Monday covering the tornado recovery there. For coverage, click here.

VALLEY VIEW — Seven people were killed and roughly 100 others were injured in tornadoes that swept through at least 50 miles of North Texas Saturday evening, Gov. Greg Abbott said.

The storm system slammed Valley View, a town of about 800 people in Cooke County, destroying or damaging more than 300 buildings — including a community of mobile homes, authorities said at a Sunday afternoon news conference. Among the dead were two children, ages 2 and 5, and three family members who were found in the same house.

A twister in Cooke County was ranked a high EF2, with peak winds reaching 135 mph, according to Jennifer Dunn, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Dunn said it was not immediately clear how many tornadoes touched down.

Abbott said he signed disaster declarations for four counties in the path of destruction — Collin, Cooke, Denton and Montague — bringing the total to 106 Texas counties under such declarations this severe weather season, more than 40% of all counties in the state.

“It has been a harrowing week with lives lost, property reduced to rubble and the hopes and dreams of Texas families and small businesses ... crushed by storm after storm,” Abbott said from Valley View, about 60 miles northwest of Dallas.

Crews were conducting a final round of search-and-rescue operations Sunday evening before moving to the aid and support stages of recovery, but Abbott said no residents were unaccounted for and the death toll was not expected to increase.

“We have friends and neighbors and fellow Texans helping out one another,” Abbott said. “That’s what we have come to see time and again.

“Texans are responding with the care, love and generosity that we have for one another.”

The American Red Cross is on site in Celina and Valley View and is assessing the disaster in counties across North Texas between Wichita Falls and Greenville, according to Brian Murnahan, regional communications director for the Red Cross.

Murnahan said they are working with the emergency management officers in each county to find out what services are needed. The organization will also do disaster assessment over the next couple of days, Murnahan said.

Cooke County

Power lines were sprawled across County Road 200 and West Lone Oak Road as neighbors assessed damage to their homes. Some sawed fallen trees and sifted through clothes and belongings left behind. Others sat and scanned what the storm had done, taking it all in.

One family was in a circle of folding chairs in their yard, where the only thing left of their home were the stairs to the front door. A couple of the family members cried as they were cradled by loved ones who’d come to see if they were safe.

Further down West Lone Oak Road, sweat dripped down Omar Rodriguez’s face as he and his family tidied up their property. He had a rake in one hand and was answering a slew of calls in the other.

Rodriguez said he was asleep when the sounds of the storm woke him about 10:30 p.m. His porch blew away and his roof was damaged, but most of the destruction was to his vehicles parked behind the home.

One RV was picked up and rolled, he said. Another was nowhere to be found.

“Down the road is much worse,” he said. “It’s terrible. I am happy my family is OK, though.”

Power poles were down on either side of southbound Interstate 35, near Valley View’s exit 483, where first responders were directing traffic.

The frame of a Shell gas station by the exit was still standing, but cow statues that once stood as a greeting were scattered across a field, while cars and pickups remained at gas pumps where they were parked when the tornado blew through.

A Denton County Emergency Services mobile operation center was parked nearby as onlookers drove by the gas station, taking photos and filming videos on their phones.

Photos: Heavy damage seen in Valley View, Texas after a suspected tornado

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Yvette Rico, 15, leaned on a car near where her home used to be on County Road 2313. Bruises had formed around her right eye. Her collarbone ached.

Late Saturday night, Yvette said, she was getting ready for bed when her TV went off and her panicked parents rushed she and her sister into a closet. The four of them crammed in together, hugging one another. She recalled her mom saying a prayer and the feeling that they were being thrown around.

Then everything went black.

When Yvette woke up, she said, she heard rain and began trying to find help. Family members who live in nearby Denton and Sanger came to stay with her. Her parents and sister were in the hospital with non life-threatening injuries.

”It’s all just a lot,” Yvette said.

In an annex building of Valley View’s First Baptist Church, the Red Cross set up a makeshift shelter that can house up to 58 people. Thirty-five people sheltered there Saturday night, said Tauna Conk, a Red Cross program manager.

The church recently constructed the building and outfitted it with showers in the event it would ever need to be used as an emergency shelter, Conk said.

With a small backhoe and a dump trailer in tow, Denton resident Brian Burleson pulled up to the shelter about 11:45 a.m. Sunday in his white pickup.

”I’m here to volunteer,” he told a Red Cross worker.

Burleson was planning to host a family cookout to celebrate his birthday, but he scratched his plans and drove to Valley View when he learned of the tornado miles from his ranch.

”It’s the right thing to do,” he said.

Down the road in the one-stoplight town, a line of people carrying donations snaked through the door of Valley View United Methodist Church. The church opened its doors Saturday night to take contributions, which started rolling in less than two hours after the storm hit, Pastor Beate Hall said.

”This community has done what it always does and respond swiftly,” she said. “All I did was open the door last night and people came.”

Valley View is tight-knit, Hall said. Two weeks ago, just 63 kids made up the graduating class of the town’s one high school.

“They know each other here,” Hall said. “These people are kind, caring and generous.”

In the church’s fellowship hall, volunteers organized bags of clothing, shoes, hangers, tampons, diapers, snacks, paper towels and soap as residents from nearby towns parked their vehicles in front of the church to unload hundreds of cases of water.

”For the most immediate physical needs, we’re doing OK,” Hall said. “The long-term need is going to be rebuilding. We’ll need folks with construction knowledge. Some companies have already reached out to donate lumber.”

Collin County

In Celina, the most severe damage was confined to Prairie Meadow Lane and Myrtle Drive, Mayor Ryan Tubbs said. Six of the roughly 15 houses in that area were destroyed, he said.

Only minor injuries were reported and all residents were accounted for, but some pets were reported missing, Tubbs said.

Homeowners said the tornado hit shortly before 11:30 p.m. Saturday. Families sheltered in pantries and storm cellars. Some described how quickly the pressure changed in the air, causing their ears to pop.

Terry Sharber, 51, was among those huddled in a shelter with his family. Sharber, who survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said he and his wife used a Collin County FEMA grant to construct the storm cellar.

”The second that it [the FEMA application process] opened up, there were hundreds of people on the waiting list,” he said. “My wife, who stayed up, got us on the very front.”

Strewn wreckage floated in Sharber’s pool. His tractor lay overturned in his backyard.

Prairie Meadow Lane, which Tubbs said has been dubbed “Firefighter Row” by locals, is home to multiple Frisco firefighters. After the tornado passed, those firefighters’ colleagues arrived to help neighbors who had already sprung into action.

While some homes remained standing, others were badly damaged, their roofs partially or completely ripped off. Tubbs said more than 25 electricity poles were down Sunday morning, and the city was working to get power restored.

“I am heartbroken from the reports of devastation sustained by our friends and neighbors in Collin County last night,” county Judge Chris Hill said in a statement. “Most of all, we are immensely grateful that there have been no reported fatalities. I am thankful for all of our first responders who acted swiftly as the calls came in throughout the night.”

Hill said Sunday he directed county staff to “deploy every resource available” to help residents who lost their homes.

Denton County

Denton County’s hardest-hit area was an RV park near Lake Ray Roberts marina, said Dawn Cobb, the county’s director of community relations.

There were no known fatalities at the park, which housed about 20 to 25 RVs, but several people were injured, Cobb said.

”It looked like the trailers had been picked up and smashed down by a toddler,” Cobb said. “They’re all completely unlivable.”

Officials survey damage

The National Weather Service said about noon Sunday that two crews from their Fort Worth office and one from their San Angelo office were working to assess damage.

The destruction continued a grim month of deadly severe weather in the U.S.

Tornadoes in Iowa this week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. In Texas on Wednesday, a tornado in Temple damaged hundreds of structures and injured more than 30 people.

Weekend storms also killed two people in Oklahoma, where the injured included guests at an outdoor wedding, and five people in Arkansas.

April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.

Staff photographer Elias Valverde II; breaking news editor Tyler Davis; staff writers Uma Bhat and Lilly Kersh; and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Correction, 7:10 a.m., May 27, 2024: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Pastor Beate Hall.