May 17, 2024
PERRYTON, Texas (AP) — Cleanup efforts were beginning Friday morning after severe storms spawned tornadoes that left at least four dead, three in the Texas Panhandle and one in the Florida Panhandle as another series of fierce storms carved its way through Southern states.
In Perryton, Texas, Ochiltree County Sheriff Terry Bouchard said three people were killed when the tornado struck Thursday afternoon and rescue efforts continued.
Another person died Thursday night in the Florida Panhandle when at least one confirmed tornado cut through Escambia County, toppling a tree onto a home, county spokesperson Andie Gibson told the Pensacola News Journal.
Of the homes searched so far in Perryton, all but one of the occupants had been accounted for, so the main priority was going back over the area and the debris field to find that person, Perryton Fire Chief Paul Dutcher said on NBC’s “Today” show.
Dutcher estimated that 150 to 200 homes in the community had been destroyed and said that in the downtown area, many storefronts were totally wiped off and buildings had collapsed or partially collapsed.
“You keep hearing people say, ‘We’ll rebuild’ and ‘We’ll be back,’” he said. “And we will. That’s the hope we have.”
But the biggest concern for now is trying to help the families of those who were killed carry on, Dutcher said.
“It is such a tragedy,” Dutcher said. “All the stuff behind me, it can all be rebuilt, but those lives that we’ve lost is really the tragedy of everything,” the fire chief said while standing in front of a collapsed building and a pile of bricks and other debris covered the ground, partially burying a truck.
Sheriff Bouchard urged residents to remain home if possible as cleanup efforts began in the town of more than 8,000 about 115 miles northeast of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line.
Meanwhile, flash flooding was reported in Pensacola, Florida, where between 12 and 16 inches of rain has fallen since Thursday evening, said Caitlin Baldwin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Mobile/Pensacola office. She said the weather service had received reports of evacuations and water rescues in Pensacola following the deluge, which was the heaviest amount of rainfall the city had received since 2014.
The storm system also brought hail and possible tornados to northwestern Ohio.
A barn was smashed and trees toppled in Sandusky County, Ohio, and power lines were downed in northern Toledo, leaving thousands without power. The weather service reported “a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado” over Bellevue and storms showing “signs of rotation” in other areas.
It was the second day in a row that powerful storms struck the U.S. On Wednesday, strong winds toppled trees, damaged buildings and blew cars off a highway from the eastern part of Texas to Georgia.
