Tornadoes and storms leave a trail of destruction in parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Powerful storms in the United States have killed at least 11 people, including two children, and left a wide trail of destruction in Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas after flattening homes and destroying a truck stop where drivers were sheltering.
Seven deaths were reported in Cooke County, Texas, near the Oklahoma border, where a tornado Saturday night tore through a rural area near a mobile home park, authorities said.
In Oklahoma, at least two people died after a tornado hit Mayes County on Saturday night, the county's emergency management chief, Johnny Janzen, told the Fox News affiliate in Tulsa.
And in northern Arkansas, two people were killed by the storms in the early hours of Sunday, local authorities confirmed.
“It's just a trail of debris. The devastation is quite severe,” Cooke County Sheriff Ray Sappington told the Associated Press news agency on Sunday.
Among the dead were two children, ages two and five, the sheriff said.
Hugo Parra, who lives in Farmers Branch, north of Dallas, said he weathered the storm with 40 to 50 people in a gas station bathroom.
“A firefighter came to see us and told us, 'You guys are very lucky,'” Parra said. “The best way to describe this is that the wind tried to blow us away from the bathrooms.”
Several people were transported to hospitals by ambulance and helicopter in Denton County, Texas, also north of Dallas. But authorities did not immediately know the full extent of the injuries.
Elsewhere in Denton County, a tornado overturned tractor-trailers and stopped traffic on Interstate 35, county spokeswoman Dawn Cobb said. A shelter was opened in the rural town of Sanger.
At least 60 to 80 people were inside a highway truck stop, some seeking shelter, when the storm hit, but there were no serious injuries, Sappington said.
The storms also caused damage in Oklahoma, where guests at an outdoor wedding were injured. About 375,000 people were also without power early Sunday in Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, according to the PowerOutage.us website.
Forecasters and authorities have issued urgent warnings to seek shelter as storms passed through the region overnight. “If you are in the path of this storm, take cover now!” posted the National Weather Service office in Norman, Oklahoma, on the X social media platform.
April and May have been intense months for tornadoes, especially in the Midwest. Iowa was hit hard last week, when a deadly tornado devastated Greenfield. Other storms caused flooding and wind damage in other parts of the state.
More severe weather was forecast for the Great Plains region on Sunday, with tornado watches still in place in many places. But in Texas, the National Weather Service said the threat had eased.
“It will be rebuilt,” Sappington told ABC affiliate WFAA. “It's Texas.”
