More than a dozen tornadoes struck the Dallas-Fort Worth area, damaging everything from trees to high schools April 3 – leaving a path of destruction in their wake.
The tornadoes occurred throughout the day with warnings issued from 7:32 am until 8:13 pm. The largest tornado occurred near Forney with damage spanning 8 miles. The twister ranked at an E-3 level.
The American Red Cross and other groups are currently working to provide support to individuals affected by the damage.
Home Depot workers have also helped, by boarding up windows and helping clear debris and downed trees from people’s yards, according to the American Red Cross website.
Several students traveled home to the DFW area for the Easter holiday and witnessed varying degrees of damage.
“Things seemed normal in the areas I was around,” Meagan Whitson, junior biblical text major from Southlake said. “I didn’t get a change to actually go to Arlington where the damage was the worst.”
Stewart McGregor, sophomore political science and Christian ministry major from Arlington, lives about 10 minutes from the southwestern part of the city, where much of the damage occurred.
“I knew that I would see damage, so my reaction was one of feeling sorry for the people’s homes that were affected,” McGregor said. “I was shocked to see pictures of a friend’s house where the tornado had put multiple sky-lights in her home.”
Kathy Stice, the mother of junior youth and family ministry major Ryan Stice, was at work at an elementary school in Arlington during the time of the storm.
“Because we have frequent tornado warnings here, I really wasn’t overly worried,” Stice said, “Then a principal came into the room where my colleagues and I were sitting along the walls and said ‘You might want to get prepared. We have a tornado on the ground one block south of here and it’s headed this way. There’s a second one right behind it.’ I guess it was the first time I realized this was the real thing. I texted Ryan in Abilene, told him there was a tornado on the ground a block away, and that I loved him and wanted him to know that. My thoughts were just that I hoped my family knew I loved them.”
“I was in Robert Oglesby’s youth and family class when I got the message from my mom.” Ryan Stice said, “It was about thirty minutes later that I got the message that she was alright and I had already seen on Facebook all the pictures and statuses about the storm and how serious it really was. You get this realization while you are waiting that anything could happen.”
