Residents in north Fort Worth, River Oaks work to clean up home damage after tornado
A handful of homes in and near River Oaks suffered tornado damage Monday evening. Yards in the area were littered with fallen trees, metal and other belongings as the storm inflicted damage to roofs and fences at some residences.
Sean Bannister grew up in the Circle Ridge Drive neighborhood since he was a teenager in 2012. He spent Wednesday morning with yellow gloves on, picking up branches from a giant Bradford Pear tree that collapsed on his home while he, his mother and girlfriend were inside.
“I had just got the tornado watch when I came into the hallway to tell everybody to start listening out for it, and before a warning, the house started shaking,” Bannister said, imitating a crashing sound. “The tree came down and a bunch of stuff, damage everywhere.”
The tornado was there, he said. “I mean, you could see it out the window.”
Bannister’s home shook for just a few seconds, but it was enough to scare his family.
“I had just come out a couple minutes before it hit. I had been outside. I’d been looking up and saw the clouds and they looked strange,” he said. “We used to chase these things when I was a kid. The rain was not (falling) straight anymore. It was angled and I was trying to tell everybody to watch out for it.”
The Bradford Pear that fell had collapsed on the home before rolling onto the front yard, where it sat Wednesday morning slowly being broken down into pieces to be moved off the property. Bannister’s back yard also suffered damage, he said, adding that he expects a long cleanup process as only he and his father will work to return their home back to normal.
“It’s a slow process, but we’ll get through it,” Bannister said. “I’ll just miss that tree. It was a beautiful tree … we had it forever.”
After surveying the damage Tuesday, the National Weather Service confirmed an EF1 tornado hit the area in River Oaks and northwest Fort Worth with wind speeds up to 100 mph.
It was one of 11 areas of tornado damage confirmed so far by the weather service.
The strongest tornado in North Texas, an EF3, hit the community of Jacksboro on Monday afternoon, destroying about 80 homes and damaging two schools and an animal shelter. Nine people were treated for injuries.
Montague County had the most tornadoes in the region, three EF1s that touched down near Bowie and Nocona, leveling a few homes but causing only minor injuries.
In Grayson County, an EF2 tornado near Sherwood Shores killed a 73-year-old woman, the only fatality reported in the region, and injured about 10 other people.
The Associated Press reported, in addition to the storms near Dallas-Fort Worth, several more tornadoes hit Monday along the Interstate 35 corridor, particularly in the Austin suburbs of Round Rock and Elgin.
This story was originally published March 23, 2022 at 12:20 PM.
