Late-night tornado kills at least 7, including 2 children, Cooke County sheriff says (2024)

VALLEY VIEW — At least seven people were killed, including two children, and more were injured in a tornado that moved through North Texas Saturday evening, officials said.

The storm system slammed into a community of mobile homes and manufactured houses south of Valley View and west of Interstate 35, Cooke County sheriff Ray Sappington said in an update aired on the Weather Channel. According to Sappington, the neighborhood of roughly 50 to 75 homes suffered “heavy damage.”

Sappington told The Associated Press the victims included two children, ages 2 and 5, and three family members who were found in one home near Valley View, a town of less than 1,000 people.

“There’s nothing left of this house,” he told the AP. “It’s just a trail of debris.”

According to the Cooke County Emergency Management and Fire Marshal’s Office, “numerous injuries of varying degrees” have been reported. Sappington declined to provide an estimate of the number of people hospitalized.

Crews were working Sunday morning to rescue individuals trapped by debris and evaluate the damage caused by the storms. The total path of destruction was about “three to four miles from west to east” in the southern part of Cooke County near the Denton County line.

“We have a lot of crews, a lot of assets ... making their way through it,” Sappington said just before 3 a.m. “We pray for those lost, but also that we can still find the injured.”

Fallen trees and damaged power lines were making the search and rescue process difficult, Sappington said.

Valley View

Power lines were sprawled across County Road 200 and West Lone Oak Road as neighbors began assessing the damage to their homes. Some sawed trees that had fallen and sifted through clothes and belongings that were left behind. Others just sat and looked at what the storm had done, taking it all in.

One family was in a circle in folding chairs in their yard, where the only thing left of their home were the stairs to the front door. A couple of them cried as loved ones cradled them, visiting to see if they were safe and to bring them drinks and snacks.

Further down West Lone Oak Road, sweat dripped down Omar Rodriguez’s face as he and his family tidied up their property. He had a rake in one hand and was answering a slew of calls in the other.

Rodriguez said he was asleep when the sounds of the storm woke him up about 10:30 p.m. His porch blew away and his roof was damaged, but most of the destruction happened to his vehicles parked behind the home.

One RV was picked up and rolled, he said. Another vehicle was nowhere to be found.

”Down the road is much worse,” he said. “It terrible. I am happy my family is OK though.”

Entire power poles were down on either side of I-35 S near Exit 483, where first responders were directing traffic.

The frame of a Shell gas station off the exit was still standing, but cow statues that once stood as a greeting were scattered across a field, while cars and pickups were still at gas pumps where they were parked when the tornado blew through.

A Denton County Emergency Services mobile operation center was parked nearby as onlookers drove past the gas station, taking photos and filming videos on their phones.

Yvette Rico, 15, leaned on a car near where her home used to be on County Road 2313. Bruises had formed around her right eye. Her collarbone ached.

Late Saturday night, Yvette said she was getting ready for bed when her TV went off and she heard her parents panicking, ushering her into a closet. The four of them crammed in together, hugging one another. She recalled crying about their dog and her mom saying a prayer before it felt like they were being thrown around.

Then everything went black.

When Yvette woke up, she heard rain and began trying to find help. Family members who live in nearby Denton and Sanger came to stay with her while her parents and sister were in the hospital with non life-threatening injuries.

”It’s all just a lot,” Yvette said.

A few houses down, Linda Jones assessed the damage to her home. The neighborhood was mostly quiet, though a generator hummed and metal roofing that came loose in the storm clanked against itself in the wind.

”We seem a lot luckier than others,” she said, adding most of the damage to her property included broken windows, downed fences and fallen trees.

Jones and her husband have lived in the home since 1999 and installed a storm shelter a few years back. The two took cover there after their daughter, who lives in Gainesville, told them there was an alert that a tornado may be heading their way.

After the noise from the wind and rain stopped, Jones opened the door to the shelter and headed to the barn to check on their two horses and donkey, which were scared, but OK.

”My strength and belief in God gets me through this,” Jones said. “God didn’t do this, it was an act of nature. All you can do is say your prayers.”

Celina

In Celina, the most severe damage was confined to two streets, Prairie Meadow Lane and Myrtle Drive, according to Celina Mayor Ryan Tubbs.

The area of about 15 houses saw six completely destroyed, but only minor injuries were reported, Tubbs said. Some pets were reported missing, but all residents were accounted for.

Homeowners said the tornado hit shortly before 11:30 p.m. Saturday night. Families sought shelter in pantries and storm cellars. Some described how quickly the pressure changed in the air, causing their ears to pop. The twister passed through within minutes.

Terry Sharber, 51, was among those huddled in a shelter with his family. Sharber, who survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said he and his wife used a Collin County FEMA grant to construct the storm cellar.

”The second that it opened up, there were hundreds of people on the waiting list,” he said. “My wife, who stayed up, got us on the very front.”

Strewn wreckage floated in Sharber’s backyard pool. His tractor lay overturned in his backyard.

Prairie Meadow Lane, which Tubbs said has been dubbed “Firefighter Row” by locals, is home to multiple City of Frisco firefighters. After the tornado subsided, those firefighters’ colleagues arrived to help neighbors who had already sprung into action.

While some homes remained standing, others were substantially damaged, their roofs partially or completely ripped off. Tubbs said more than 25 electricity poles were down Sunday morning, and the city was working on getting power restored in the area.

“I am heartbroken from the reports of devastation sustained by our friends and neighbors in Collin County last night,” county Judge Chris Hill said in a statement. “Most of all, we are immensely grateful that there have been no reported fatalities. I am thankful for all of our first responders who acted swiftly as the calls came in throughout the night.”

Hill signed a disaster declaration for Collin County Sunday, and said he has directed county staff to “deploy every resource available” to provide assistance to residents whose homes were destroyed.

Officials survey damage

The National Weather Service said Sunday at 8:30 a.m. that two survey teams were working the area and would make determinations regarding the strength of the storm.

“Until we go out there and survey the damage, it’s really all we know,” said David Bonnette, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. “Right now, it’s tough to say.”

At 10:24 p.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service issued a bulletin: “SEEK SHELTER NOW!!! Era and Valley View in the direct path of this possible tornado. A strong tornado could develop quickly.”

That was followed at 10:40 with another seek-shelter video announcing: “Tornado observed on spotter video moving east. Will cross I-35 shortly between Valley View and Sanger.”

Denton County emergency sirens could be heard around 10:42 p.m.

Oncor was reporting about 77,000 outages in North Texas as of about 7:45 a.m. Sunday.

The destruction continued a grim month of deadly severe weather in the U.S. Tornadoes in Iowa this week left at least five people dead and dozens injured. In Texas on Wednesday, a tornado in Temple damaged of structures and injured more than 30 people.

April had the second-highest number of tornadoes on record in the country.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Staff photographer Elias Valverde II; staff writers Claire Ballor, Uma Bhat, Lilly Kersh and Tyler J. Davis, ; and The Associated Press contributed to this report.