Authorities went door to door in parts of northern Dallas on Monday after a weekend tornado touched down, knocking out power and causing severe damage before moving on to lash parts of the Great Plains.
The National Weather Service confirmed the tornado touched down around 9:30 p.m. Sunday. The twister damaged buildings, uprooted trees and snapped utility poles in half, CNN affiliate KTVT reported.
Three people were taken to hospitals with storm-related injuries that were not life-threatening, according to the City of Dallas Office of Emergency Management.
“Considering the path that the storm took, it went across a pretty densely populated part of our city, I think we should consider ourselves very fortunate that we did not lose any lives, no fatalities and no serious injuries in last night’s storm,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said in a news conference Monday morning.
At daybreak, more than 100,000 customers were without power in the Dallas/Fort Worth metropolitan area, power company Oncor said. That number stood at 50,000 later in the day.
The city is working with Dallas Fire and Rescue to conduct damage assessment to see if the city is eligible for any disaster declaration or FEMA funding, Dallas Emergency Management Director Rocky Vaz said.
Six schools across the Dallas Independent School District canceled classes Monday due to the extensive damage some of the campuses sustained in the storm, the district tweeted.
Dallas Fire and Rescue Chief Dominique Artis said that his agency responded to “no less than 50 calls for utility wires down and over 40 natural gas leaks.” He added that Fire Station 41, located east of the North Dallas tollway, sustained significant damage from a roof collapse due to high winds from the storm, but no firefighters at that location were injured.
There are no preliminary ratings of the damage and power of the tornado, the weather service said, adding it will conduct storm surveys on Monday and Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the line of storms responsible for the tornado threatened parts of the Plains with more severe weather.
Storms will continue to be a concern Monday as the cold front sweeps east, CNN meteorologist Monica Garrett said. Although the tornado threat will diminish, damaging winds will be a threat from Tennessee to the central Gulf Coast.
