Storm damage leaves Lubbock residents homeless
For Katrena Baez, two broken front windows are the least of her problems after Wednesday night's storms.
"I've never been through anything like this before, I was freaking out." Baez said.
If you drive around Lubbock, it's still not too difficult to see how widespread the damage from the storm was and how many people it affected. Then entire roof off an apartment complex was blown off by the winds, carried all the way across the street and landed on top of Baez's home, doing plenty of damage.
"I had an air conditioner in this front window, it doesn't even look like an air conditioner anymore. It looks like a ball." She said.
Her and her family are now displaced along with her next door neighbor Robert Rodriquez and his family.
"We're stuck, we got pregnant women who live in the household, all of us work and it's just a little hard right now." Rodriquez said.
Parts of the canopy that covered the gas pumps at the Parkway and Zenith 7-11 were blown into Domodrick Jackson's home.
"It was terrifying to tell you the truth." Jackson said. "Just to tell you the least. It was real scary. You know, I felt kind of helpless. I sure don't want to go through that again. It seemed like a tornado was here even if it wasn't. Imagine if it was."
Jody James of the National Weather Service in Lubbock was out surveying the damage.
"When you see 80 to 90 mph winds, it doesn't really matter whether it's straight line or tornadic. It's just the damage pattern is different. But the force on a building and the kind of damage you can see is the same."
Because of those howling winds, what was once a ceiling, now lets light and water through. And for James Harris, there aren't even walls left behind after his mobile home was blown away.
"I'm amazed it picked it up from this spot here and flung it. That's a 75 foot trailer. So it takes pretty good force to move something like that."
Even the sturdy structures like the Lubbock Heart and Surgical Hospital near the North Loop and Quaker had roof damage. Ray Vinson is the CEO of the Hospital.
"Water intruded into our acute care number three unit where we have 24 beds and we had to evacuate all the patients that were on that unit." Vinson said.
He added that no one was injured and the medical facility is back in business.
Wind damage wasn't isolated to Lubbock. Gusts clocked at up to 84 mph were reported across the area.