GRANBURY, Texas, (Reuters) – Six people were dead and seven missing after a powerful tornado ripped through a north Texas neighborhood that included housing for the poor, in the deadliest severe storm outbreak in the United States this year.
Authorities were assessing damage and searching through rubble yesterday, hoping to find survivors among the twisted metal and splintered wood of flattened homes.
“This tornado was a monster,” said Hood County Commissioner Steve Berry. “It’s just devastating.”
The tornado, which brought winds of 166 to 200 miles per hour, was rated an EF4 by the National Weather Service (NWS), the second-most powerful level for such a storm, said NWS meteorologist Mark Wiley. EF4 tornadoes are rare and can blow away a well constructed wood or brick home, according to weather service ratings.
The storm blew homes from their foundations, tossed cars through the air and uprooted trees as it raged through at least four counties near the Dallas-Fort Worth area Wednesday evening.
The National Weather Service said there were reports of 10 tornadoes touching down in the area.
Granbury, a town of 8,000 people about 35 miles (55 km) southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth, took the hardest hit.
Officials counted four men and two women dead in Hood County, where Granbury is located, said Tye Bell, a county spokesman. Another seven were missing and at least 45 people were injured, many of whom lived in Granbury’s Rancho Brazos subdivision of about 110 mostly single-family homes.
