A tornado tore through the Texas Panhandle town of Perryton on Thursday, killing three people, injuring dozens more and causing widespread damage as another series of fierce storms carved its way through southern states.
The National Weather Service in Amarillo confirmed that a tornado hit the area shortly after 5pm on Thursday. Local officials said on Thursday night that two people were missing.
Perryton fire chief Paul Dutcher said three people were killed, including at least one person in a mobile home park that took a “direct hit” from a tornado. Dutcher said at least 30 trailers were damaged or destroyed.
First responders from surrounding towns and cities and from neighbouring Oklahoma descended on the town, which is home to more than 8,000 people and about 115 miles north-east of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line.
Mobile homes were ripped apart and pick-up trucks with shattered windshield were slammed against mounds of rubble in residential areas.
Perryton’s downtown also was severely damaged. About two blocks of businesses were heavily damaged, including an office supply store, a floral shop and a hair salon along the town’s Main Street. A minivan was shoved into the outer wall of a theatre.
With a few hours of daylight left after the storm passed through, broken windows were being boarded up.
The Ochiltree County sheriff’s department said it would enforce a curfew from midnight to 6am on Friday because of downed power lines and other dangers that might not be visible in the dark.
Storm chaser Brian Emfinger told Fox Weather that he watched the twister move through a mobile home park, mangling trailers and uprooting trees.
“I had seen the tornado do some pretty serious destruction to the industrial part of town,” he said. “Unfortunately, just west of there, there is just mobile home, after mobile home, after mobile home that is completely destroyed.”
There was no immediate word on the tornado’s size or wind speeds, meteorologist Luigi Meccariello said.
Nearly 50,000 customers were without electricity in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the poweroutage.us website.
Ochiltree General Hospital in Perryton on Facebook said: “Walking/wounded please go to the clinic. All others to the hospital ER.”
“We have seen somewhere between 50 and 100 patients,” said Kelly Judice, the hospital’s interim CEO. Those include about 10 people in critical condition who were transferred to other hospitals.
Patients had minor to major trauma, ranging from “head injuries to collapsed lungs, lacerations, broken bones,” she said.
Elsewhere in Texas, and other southern states stretching to Florida, heat advisories were in effect on Thursday and were forecast into the Juneteenth holiday weekend with temperatures reaching toward 38 degrees Celsius. It was expected to feel as hot as 43 degrees Celsius.
It was the second day in a row that powerful storms struck the US. On Wednesday, strong winds toppled trees, damaged buildings and blew cars off a highway from the eastern part of Texas to Georgia.
