Videos: Abbot Declares Disaster in Texas After Tornadoes Tear Across US South
22:31 GMT 22.03.2022 (Updated: 17:48 GMT 15.01.2023)
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A band of powerful storms is cutting its way across the American South, bringing torrential rain, powerful wind and numerous tornadoes from central Texas eastward.
At least one person has died and nine others injured after at least nine tornadoes spawned across central and eastern Texas on Monday. The storms have now passed eastward into Louisiana and Mississippi, where schools were closed early on Tuesday ahead of their arrival.
The National Weather Service has confirmed nine tornadoes hit Texas on Monday, ranging from a powerful EF3 storm that hit Jacksboro to numerous weaker twisters scattered across 16 counties.
Some folks captured videos of the carnage.
In one video, as a tornado crosses the highway in front of a driver, a pickup truck going the other way is seen being knocked over and spun around by the twister, which then mysteriously sets the truck upright again as it passes away. The driver is then seen speeding away.
Omg… just going thru my video. This is a story about a red truck and a tornado…. I CANNOT believe they drove away like that. #txwx #tornado pic.twitter.com/8h0nD88xFv
— Brian Emfinger (@brianemfinger) March 22, 2022
In another video filmed from the front doors of a Walmart store in Round Rock, near the state capital of Austin, a twister roars into the massive parking lot as the filmer screams over the roaring wind to running shoppers to seek shelter inside the store. As might be expected, the curses fly as freely in the video as the debris, so viewer caution is advised.
Tornado at Round Rock Walmart.
— Ya Boi James Watson (@SteelAtomic) March 22, 2022
I don't get paid enough for this shit 😆
@KXAN_News @KVUE @cnnbrk @FoxNews @BBCWorld pic.twitter.com/2kAr62nZJ6
A mounted camera at Round Rock’s Kalahari Resorts that was placed by local ABC affiliate KVUE got an even more incredible view: the tornado spun its way right over the camera, giving viewers a unique taste of an experience they will hopefully never get in person.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a disaster declaration on Tuesday for the 16 affected counties, according to The Dallas Morning News. He made the declaration from a Jacksboro hospital, where an elementary school serving as a storm shelter was struck by a tornado. He called it a “miracle” no one was killed.
Cyclones aren’t the only agents of chaos in these storms, as Jacksboro police chief Scott Haynes reportedly had to wade through inches of standing water to get to sheltering students inside the struck school, and several water rescues have been reported across the state as drivers attempted to ford high water on the road.
One death from the storm has been confirmed: a 73-year-old woman from Grayson County, but officials did not say how she died, according to the Associated Press.
Over 90,000 homes and businesses are without power as of Tuesday in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi as the storms passed eastward.
As the storms passed through Louisiana, they entered territory still reeling from the catastrophic landing of Hurricane Ida in late August 2021. In Houma, the seat of the southern Terrebonne Parish, shelters opened early on Tuesday as there are over 8,000 households still living in temporary homes due to Ida and two other hurricanes that hit in 2020: Laura and Delta.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced it would allocate over $1.7 billion in recovery funds to victims of the storms in the Bayou State.
Further east, in West Point, Mississippi, meteorologists issued a tornado warning on Tuesday night as the storms continued eastward.
