Search and rescue crews will resume searching on Friday for at least one person missing in the north Texas town of Perryton after it was struck by one or more tornadoes that killed three people and sent up to 100 more to the hospital on Thursday evening, some in critical condition.
The town remained without power the day after a huge twister inflicted damage to homes and a mobile home park.
The Perryton fire chief, Paul Dutcher, told ABC News that at least one person was killed in a mobile home park that took a “direct hit” from a tornado.
Local KVII-TV reported that at least 30 trailers had been damaged or destroyed in Perryton and that firefighters were still rescuing victims at 6pm local time. It said the town may have been struck by three tornadoes.
“It’s bad, it’s very bad. It’s non-stop crazy. It couldn’t have hit in a more vulnerable place,” Mayor Kerry Symons said by telephone, adding that he would be unable to say exactly how many people had died until Friday morning.
Images from the ground in Perryton showed homes torn apart and left in rubble. As the sun rose on Friday, a car could be seen upside down inside the torn remains of a home and at least 200 structures were damaged, ABC’s Good Morning America reported, including some homes reduced to a heap of sticks and stones.
First responders from surrounding areas and from Oklahoma descended on the town late on Thursday, which is home to more than 8,000 people and about 115 miles north-east of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line.
“Our crews are arriving on site and are assisting in removing lines from cars and across the roads,” Xcel Energy said in a statement.
Nearly 50,000 customers were without electricity in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the poweroutage.us website.
“Jane & I are praying for the people of Perryton tonight. I am in contact with Mayor Symons and this tragedy is being closely monitored by myself and my whole staff,” Representative Ronny Jackson, a Republican from Texas, said on Twitter.
The Ochiltree general hospital in Perryton directed the injured to a local clinic or the emergency room. The hospital also said an American Red Cross shelter had been set up at the Ochiltree county expo center.
“We have seen somewhere between 50 and 100 patients,” said Kelly Judice, the hospital’s interim CEO, including about 10 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.
By evening, the weather front was moving south-east across Oklahoma. The weather service said a second round of storms would continue to move through that state and parts of Texas through the evening while the risk of severe weather, including tornadoes, remained for the metropolitan Oklahoma City area and more severe weather is expected across the south over the weekend.
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.
Felecia Bowser, at the National Weather Service in Tallahassee, Florida, said the widespread storm system raging inland in the region was unprecedented this early in the summer.
The climate crisis means America will probably get more extreme weather systems that spawn killer tornado and supercells generating dangerous hail, the American Meteorological Society warned in a report this spring.
