WHITNEY, Texas (KWTX) Homeowners and business owners started picking up the pieces Monday after a tornado hit Whitney Sunday night.
According to the National Weather Service, the EF-1 tornado brought winds of up to 90 miles per hour, mostly to the eastern side of Lake Whitney.
Multiple homes were destroyed, and many more homes and businesses were damaged.
One of the hardest hit was Juniper Cove Marina at Lake Whitney.
“We were all held back in a corner with two dogs and a cat,” said Gerald Anderson, owner of Juniper Cove Marina.
Anderson lived on-site in an RV with his wife and daughter. He said he was watching the Cowboys game when he heard people in mobile homes in the area needed to take cover.
He decided to take his wife and daughter to a building next door with a stronger foundation, a move which may have saved their lives.
“My daughter wife and I were in there and you could hear it coming,” said Anderson.
“It took the roof off, two or three of the sides out. The park model we live in is sitting on top of it right now and we had to go out through a hole in the wall, only way we could get out last night.”
He said the Cowboy’s game may have helped keep people there safe; all of them were out watching the game, and not inside the marina’s cabins or RV’s at the time.
Besides losing at least ten of the cabins his property, his boat docks are destroyed, 100 covered boat slips are now uncovered, and many of his customer’s boats which were in wet slips in the water are now on stranded on land.
The twister likely caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages to the marina, if not more.
However, Anderson said he’s prepared because this isn’t the first time the marina has been hit by a tornado; the marina had just recently recovered from the May 2015 tornado which hit Whitney on Mother’s Day weekend.
“Here we go again,” said Anderson.
“This time I’ve got about 1,000 hours of pursuing the insurance claims and getting the workers in and contractors, and we’re pretty experienced now about what has to happen. We’re going to be very busy these next four, five, six months.”
Emergency crews were working into the night Monday as homeowners collected and burned some of the hundreds trees the tornado uprooted.
No one was injured in the storm.
KWTX made calls to the Hill County Office of Emergency Management and the Hill County Sheriff’s Office Monday evening, but offices were closed.
By Rissa Shaw | Posted: Mon 10:58 PM, Jan 16, 2017 | Updated: Tue 10:19 AM, Jan 17, 2017
