8 thousand people in Montgomery County lost power after a tornado ripped through the area also causing extensive damage and minor injuries.
The County Judge, Mark Keough says within just a few hours, half of those Entergy customers had their power restored, but the road to recovery for so many is just beginning.
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A family’s harrowing experience
Daisy Moya says it all happened so fast. Just before 12:30 p.m. this afternoon she says the mobile home on Pickering Road which she and her 3 children have only lived in for a year, was picked up by a tornado and flipped twice. It landed upside down.
Before she knew it her family was being thrown around. Neighbor, Sasha Zamora rushed over to help.
“Had to get the baby out of the wall,” Zamora said.
The family was taken to the hospital and treated for cuts and bruises before returning home to see what could be salvaged. Meanwhile, just feet away, Heather Byford was blocked out of her home.
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“You can’t see my house because we’re blocked by all these trees that came down,” Byford said. “Fortunately our family wasn’t injured. My daughter is away, thank heaven, but me and the boys we just kind of huddled down.”
Nearby devastation
Across the street neighbors said what is now a huge pile of debris used to be a triple-wide, only moved into about a month ago. Now it’s gone, fortunately, they say no one was home at the time.
Juste Keough and Precinct 4 Constable, Kenneth Hayden canvassed the area to assess the damage and offer support.
“We’re kind of following the path that the tornado took and the devastation through that path is pretty catastrophic,” Hayden said.
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“We had 15 individuals who, were trapped, we got them all out with no injuries,it’s amazing. 7 of them were in one vehicle that had apparently gone to look at a home to buy it and that home got hit while they were waiting in the car,” Keough said.
The good news is, no fatalities were reported in the county, and despite the widespread and in many cases severe damage to properties including a church and fire station only minor injuries were reported.
Continued response efforts
The severe weather may be over but first responders jobs are not. Constable Hayden says with the anticipation of continued outages, there will be extra patrols throughout the area making sure everyone’s ok.
