AUSTIN, Texas – Tornadoes and storms that lashed the Dallas, Texas, area on the weekend left at least 11 people dead and hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed, authorities reported Sunday.The town hardest hit was Garland, in the northeastern Dallas metropolitan area, where eight people died in a 12-vehicle traffic accident caused by a tornado. Several of the vehicles were blown off the highway, reportedly killing five people inside them.
Another 15 people were transported by ambulance from the accident scene on Highway I30 to hospitals in the area, Garland police spokesman Pedro Barineau said at a press conference.
Emergency crews and local residents are working amid intense rain to repair the damage from the tornadoes, but new tornado and flooding alerts are being issued and meteorologists are predicting heavy winds and a rain- and snowstorm for Sunday night.
Some 600 houses were damaged or destroyed in Garland and 60 people were injured, and authorities are seeking people trapped under the ruins of their homes.
Three people also died in Collin County, northeast of Dallas.
Meanwhile, two people reportedly died in Copeville when a tornado destroyed a gasoline station where they had taken shelter, and a child was reported killed in Blue Ridge, but no further details are available yet on that incident.
Besides the Texas tornadoes, on Saturday authorities reported flooding in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as in southern Ohio and Oklahoma.
The storms in North Texas were the latest in a series of unusual weather events this past week. Fourteen people had already died in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, and with the Texas fatalities, the known death toll now stands at 25.
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