PERRYTON, Texas — At least one fatality and over a dozen injuries were reported in Perryton, Texas, after a destructive tornado tore through the city, located in the state’s panhandle near the Oklahoma border.
Tornado-warned storms had charged into the region Thursday evening, and the National Weather Service confirmed a tornado on the ground north of the city moving eastward at 20 miles per hour at 5:13 p.m. CDT.
As search and rescue efforts commenced following the destructive storm, at least one fatality and over 75 injuries were confirmed by Perryton Fire Chief Paul Dutcher with ABC News. He noted that the confirmed death was from a trailer home, one of the many hit hard by the storm.
Live footage from the storm-chasing group TwisterChasers showed extensive damage to mobile homes, some of which had been entirely destroyed. Power lines and trees could also be seen strewn across roads and lawns alike.
“I’ve got people yelling for help,” TwisterChasers member Jeff Piotrowski said while filming as he walked the streets of the destroyed portion of the city. Based on the damage, Piotrowski described the tornado as “extremely violent.”
At least 30 mobile homes were damaged or destroyed after a mobile home park took a “direct hit” from the tornado, according to Dutcher. By 6 p.m. local time, firefighters were rescuing people from the rubble. The number of people injured may rise as the evening continues.
Other crews began the task of cleaning up power lines in order to restore electricity to the town. Perryton was without power following the storms, Xcel Energy told ABC News.
Throughout the county of Ochiltree, where Perryton is located, over 56% of customers were without power and nearly all of the Excel Energy customers tracked were experiencing outages, according to PowerOutage.US.
Produced in association with AccuWeather
Edited by Daisy Atino and Virginia Van Zandt
