Thread: Dozens injured after tornadoes, severe storms rip through Dallas area

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Tornadoes, severe storms rip through Dallas area, injuring more than dozen

Published April 04, 2012



BURLESON, Texas – The tornado hurtled toward the nursing home. Physical therapist Patti Gilroy said she saw the swirling mass barreling down through the back door, after herding patients into the hallway in the order trained: walkers, wheelchairs, then beds. "It wasn't like a freight train like everybody says it is," said Gilroy, who rounded up dozens to safety at Green Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

"It sounded like a bomb hit. And we hit the floor, and everybody was praying. It was shocking." A destructive reminder of a young tornado season Wednesday left thousands without power and hundreds of homes pummeled or worse Wednesday, after the National Weather Service said as many as a dozen twisters touched down in a wrecking-ball swath of violent weather that stretched across Dallas and Fort Worth. Despite the intensity of the slow-moving storms, as of late Tuesday no fatalities or serious injuries had been reported, though there were several less serious injuries.

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The exact number of tornadoes Tuesday wasn't expected to be known until surveyors fanned across North Texas, looking for clues among the debris that blanketed yards and rooftops peeled off slats.

The Red Cross put a preliminary estimate of damaged homes at 650. In the southern Dallas suburb of Lancaster, where damage was especially widespread, around 150 people remained in a shelter Tuesday night.

"I guess `shock' is probably a good word," Lancaster Mayor Marcus Knight said.

Tornadoes raked the region just as the usual peak of the tornado season is kicking off. April is typically the worst in a season that stretches from March to June, said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Bishop. He added that Tuesday's outburst suggest that "we're on pace to be above normal."

An entire wing at the Green Oaks nursing home in Arlington crumbled. Stunning video from Dallas showed big-rig trailers tossed into the air and spiraling like footballs. At the Cedar Valley Christian Center church in Lancaster, Pastor Glenn Young said he cowered in a windowless room with 30 children from a daycare program, some of them newborns.

Ten people in Lancaster were injured, two of them severely, said Lancaster police officer Paul Beck. Three people were injured in Arlington, including two Green Oaks residents taken to a hospital with minor injuries, Arlington Assistant Fire Chief Jim Self said.

Gilroy said the blast of wind through Green Oaks lasted about 10 seconds. She described one of her co-workers being nearly "sucked out" while trying to get a patient out of the room at the moment the facility was hit.

Joy Johnston was also there, visiting her 79-year-old sister.

"Of course the windows were flying out, and my sister is paralyzed, so I had to get someone to help me get her in a wheelchair to get her out of the room," she said.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport canceled hundreds of flights and diverted others heading its way. In one industrial section of Dallas, rows of empty tractor-trailers crumpled like soda cans littered a parking lot.

"The officers were watching the tornadoes form and drop," Kennedale police Chief Tommy Williams said. "It was pretty active for a while."

About 12,600 homes in Arlington alone remained without power late Tuesday, said Tiara Ellis Richard, a police spokeswoman for the city.

Most of Dallas was spared the full wrath of the storm. Yet in Lancaster, television helicopters panned over exposed homes without roofs and flattened buildings. Residents could be seen walking down the street with firefighters and peering into homes, looking at the damage after the storm passed.

American Airlines canceled more than 450 arriving and departing flights at its DFW airport hub by late Tuesday afternoon, and 37 other incoming flights had been diverted to different airports.
DFW Airport spokesman David Magana said more than 110 planes were damaged by hail. It wasn't clear how many belonged to American Airlines, but American and American Eagle had pulled 101 planes out of service for hail-damage inspections.

Flights also were canceled at Dallas Love Field, which is a big base for Southwest Airlines. That airline canceled more than 45 flights in and out of the airport by Tuesday evening.

Meteorologists said the storms were the result of a slow-moving storm system centered over northern New Mexico.

Read more: Tornadoes, Severe Storms Rip Through Dallas Area, Injuring More Than Dozen | Fox News

Why Is The Heartland Of America Being Ripped To Shreds By Gigantic Tornadoes That Are Becoming More Frequent And More Powerful?

What in the world is going on in the heartland of America? Spring has barely even begun and we are seeing communities all over America being ripped to shreds by gigantic tornadoes. A lot of meteorologists claimed that the nightmarish tornado season of 2011 was an "anomaly", but 2012 is shaping up to be just as bad or even worse. These tornado outbreaks just seem to keep getting more frequent and more powerful. For example, several "supercell" tornadoes ripped across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area on Tuesday. People all over America were absolutely horrified as they watched footage of these tornadoes toss around tractor trailers as if they were toy trucks. Personally, I have never seen a tractor trailer tossed 100 feet into the sky before. This is not normal. CBS 11 meteorologist Larry Mowry told his viewers that one of these torandoes was "as serious of a tornado we've seen in years". So why is this happening? Why is the heartland of America being ripped to shreds by gigantic tornadoes that are becoming more frequent and more powerful?

Up to this point in 2012, at least 57 people have been killed by tornadoes across the country. Thousands more have been injured and countless homes have been reduced to splinters. In fact, there have been a couple of small towns that have been essentially wiped off the map by giant tornadoes.

What we are witnessing is not normal. Prior to the horrific tornadoes that we saw on Tuesday, there had been 326 tornadoes in the United States so far in 2011. That is about twice as many as usual for this time of the year.

Overall, the United States only sees about 1,200 tornadoes for the entire year usually. The busiest time of the year for tornadoes is still a way off, and we are on pace for a truly historic year.

But it is not just the number of tornadoes that is the problem. Many of these tornadoes are immensely powerful. The following is how the local CBS affiliate described the damage done by the recent tornadoes in Texas....

Multiple tornadoes threw tractor-trailers in the air, ripped the roof off an elementary school, leveled houses and shut down airline traffic out of Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport as one of the worst storms in years hit North Texas Tuesday.

Baseball-sized hail punched holes through car roofs, and a Red Cross spokeswoman warned the breadth of the destruction may not be cleared until well into Wednesday. The mayors of Arlington and Lancaster declared a state of disaster following the storm strike.

There were even reports of massive "debris balls" in Dallas, Ellis, Johnson and Tarrant counties. These tornadoes picked up huge amounts of debris into the air that were just carried along by the storms. That must have been an absolutely horrifying sight to behold.

A lot of jaw-dropping footage from these tornadoes has already been posted on the Internet. For example, the following video shows tractor trailers being tossed about like rag dolls....



Have you ever seen anything like that before in your life?

I know that I haven't.

Look, one bad year can be dismissed as a coincidence.

But two historically bad years in a row?

Many would call that a trend.

Last year, America experienced one of the worst tornado seasons of all time. Many Americans will never, ever forget the devastation caused by the tornadoes of 2011.

For example, National Geographic reported that a gigantic F5 tornado that ripped through the Tuscaloosa, Alabama area had winds of up to 260 miles an hour. If you drive through Tuscaloosa today you can see that they are still trying to recover.

And Joplin, Missouri may never be the same again after what happened to that city last year. The gigantic tornado that ripped through Joplin was called by some the deadliest single tornado in more than 60 years.

That mammoth tornado ripped a path of destruction through Joplin that was more than a mile wide and more than 6 miles long. You can see some amazing before and after photographs of Joplin right here.

But people don't think about what happened to Joplin much anymore because there have been so many other horrific disasters since then.

Overall, 2011 was the worst year for natural disasters in U.S. history.

Many were hoping that there would be a return to normalcy in 2012.

Unfortunately, that simply is not happening.

In 2012, we have already seen one of the worst tornado outbreaks ever recorded in the month of March in all of American history. A couple of small towns in Indiana were virtually completely wiped out by that outbreak.

Sadly, what we have already seen in Indiana and Texas may just be the warm up act.

The truth is that usually May is the worst month for tornadoes in the United States.

So how bad are things going to get this year?

How many other communities across the nation are going to be absolutely ripped to shreds before tornado season is over this year?

In 2009, there were 1146 tornadoes in the United States.

In 2010, there were 1282 tornadoes in the United States.

In 2011, there were 1691 tornadoes in the United States.

In 2012, we are on pace to far exceed the total we saw in 2011.

So would could be causing all of this?

Do you think that you have a theory that explains these tornadoes?

Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below....

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Why Is The Heartland Of America Being Ripped To Shreds By Gigantic Tornadoes That Are Becoming More Frequent And More Powerful?