Stunned residents of a north Texas county scoured their mangled homes Sunday after seven people there were killed when a tornado tore through a remote region near the tiny community of Valley View.
Cook County Sheriff Ray Sappington said “only a trail of debris remained” in the area bordering Oklahoma, where the dead included two children, ages 2 and 5, in Valley View, a town of just 800 people. The bodies of three family members were found in one home, the sheriff said.
The county bore the brunt of powerful weekend storms that killed 15 people in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Tens of thousands of residents of three states were left without electricity.
Kevin Dorantes, 20, was in nearby Carrollton when he learned a tornado was approaching the Valley View neighborhood where he lived with his father and brother. He called and told them to take shelter in a windowless bathroom, where the couple rode out the hurricane and survived without injury.
Some of Dorantes’ neighbors weren’t so lucky.
Wandering around the area, examining downed power lines and destroyed houses, he came across a family whose home was reduced to a pile of rubble. The father and son were trapped under the rubble as friends and neighbors frantically tried to pull them out, Dorantes said.
“They were conscious but seriously injured,” Dorantes said. “My father’s leg was broken.”
He said they were able to get the father onto a mattress and carry him to a truck, where he and his son were taken by ambulance to a nearby convenience store.
Valley View Police Chief Justin Stammes said the small farming community was reeling.
“It was exhausting and heartbreaking,” Stamms said. “I’ve seen damage like this on TV, but I’ve never seen it in person before. It’s horrible.”
He said most of the town’s residents work in agriculture or at the local feed store and postal service. Many of the displaced residents are living in temporary shelters built inside local churches, he said.
Cynthia De La Cruz said her family had hoped to put some of their belongings into storage while they decided where to live.
“We’re trying to take back everything we can salvage,” she said. De La Cruz described the city, about 55 miles (88 kilometers) north of Fort Worth, as a close-knit, predominantly Latino neighborhood.
“I know this community really sticks together when bad things happen,” she said.
On Sunday afternoon, men were already busy putting a new roof on the badly damaged house. Teams of neighbors and local church volunteers helped residents move furniture and other belongings from destroyed homes into pickup trucks and trailers.
Christopher Landeros, 19, was eating dinner in nearby Lewisville when his mother, Juana Landeros, called him and said, “Find us in the truck.”
Juana, her husband and their 9-year-old son Larry took refuge in their pickup truck under rugs in the garage. There is no garage now. The tree crashed into the windows.
“It was terrible. Hellish. I just kept thinking we were going to die,” Juana said.
Christopher ran to a neighbor’s house two streets away to help pull the wounded man out. The man’s wife and two children died.
The street leading into their Valley View neighborhood was littered with twisted sheets of metal, pieces of siding, pieces of plywood, downed power poles and trees stripped of their branches and bark.
The two boys parked their bikes next to the overturned van and raced through the wreckage.