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Tornadoes, floods upend Texas and Plains States

By AP | Last updated: May 12, 2015 - 8:42:03 AM

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People look through rubble, May 7, in an area damaged by severe weather a day earlier, in Oklahoma City. Authorities are assessing the damage from spring storms that spawned more than a dozen suspected tornadoes in the southern Plains, destroying dozens of homes, causing flooding and forcing the evacuation of Oklahoma City’s main airport. Photos: AP/Wide World photos

VAN, Texas (AP) - Emergency responders searched through wreckage in parts of Texas and Arkansas early May 11 after a line of tornadoes battered several small communities, killing at least two people and injuring dozens of others.

Two people who lived in adjoining mobile homes in Nashville, Arkansas, were killed after several twisters were reported late May 10.

In neighboring Texas, a likely tornado pummeled the small city of Van. Chuck Allen, the fire marshal and emergency management coordinator for Van Zandt County, said about 30 percent of the community was damaged.

Floods resulting from the same storm system that rolled across North Texas caused a huge sinkhole to open up in Granbury, some 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth. The 40-foot-wide sinkhole swallowed the parking lot of a supermarket and damaged water and sewer lines beneath, WFAA-TV reported.

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Analiza DePaulo looks for belongings in a damaged recreational vehicle park in Oklahoma City, May 7. Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency in 12 Oklahoma counties hit by tornadoes, severe storms, straight-line winds and flooding.

Farther north, in Lake City, Iowa, a suspected tornado tore the roof from a high school as about 150 students, family and faculty attended an awards ceremony inside the night of May 10.

Elsewhere, winter seemed to return briefly to parts of the Dakotas.

The National Weather Service posted winter weather advisories and warnings for southeastern North Dakota and north-central South Dakota, with a couple of inches of snow and strong winds expected. The same area experienced more than 8 inches of snow over the weekend, breaking snowfall records for those dates in Rapid City.

Days earlier, victims from a 51-twister outbreak across Tornado Alley sifted through rubble May 7. Authorities are investigating the damage left behind by spring storms carrying more than a dozen suspected tornadoes that swept across the southern Plains, bringing floods, forcing the evacuation of an international airport and destroying homes near Oklahoma City.

At presstime, at least 12 people were injured, and one death was reported from the twisters that also hit rural parts of Texas, Kansas and Nebraska the night of May 6.

The Oklahoma City area seemed to be the hardest hit. A twister destroyed homes in Grady County, southwest of the city, and it appeared another tornado touched down in the area later that evening when a second storm came through.

Before sunrise May 7 in northeast Oklahoma City, fire department divers worked for hours to rescue a motorist who was trapped in a car by the high waters left in the wake of the storms.

The National Weather Service said 5 to 8 inches of rain fell in the area, said Forrest Mitchell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma. A measurement of 7.1 inches at the Oklahoma City airport set a new daily rainfall record, he said, topping the previous record of 2.61 inches.

Oklahoma City spokeswoman Kristy Yager said the rainfall prompted the city to issue a flash flood emergency for the first time in its history.

its history. In Nebraska, 10 to 15 homes were damaged near Grand Island, and between Hardy and Ruskin, near the Kansas line. At least nine tornadoes were reported in Kansas, the strongest of them in the sparsely populated northcentral part of the state.

(Compiled from Associated Press reports.)