A severe storm and tornado ripped through a city west of Dallas on Tuesday night, leaving a trail of shredded buildings. The storm was the latest stretch of severe weather that has walloped parts of the central United States for nearly a week.
Two people in the city, Mineral Wells, Texas, were reported hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, and other residents were displaced from their homes, as officials assessed the damage on Wednesday morning. Ryan Dunn, the Mineral Wells police chief, said at a news conference Wednesday that the National Weather Service had confirmed that a tornado had touched down.
The news conference took place against a backdrop of destruction with roofs sheared off buildings and other structures reduced to what looked like piles of oversized matchsticks. Most of the damage occurred to commercial and industrial buildings, Mr. Dunn said. Residential buildings were largely spared.
The commercial and industrial buildings were mostly empty when the tornado hit late in the afternoon.
“When you can see the destruction here, you can tell it’s amazing” that there were no serious injuries, said Regan Johnson, the mayor of Mineral Wells. She added that a tornado had hit the area about a decade ago, but “I’m not sure we have anything in the records like this.”
Tuesday’s storms were part of a broader stretch of dangerous weather that has unfolded since last week, damaging homes and cars, flooding neighborhoods and knocking out power for thousands from Texas to Michigan to Kentucky. Over the weekend, a thunderstorm that produced a tornado swept through towns an hour north of Mineral Wells, leaving two dead, according to officials in Wise and Parker Counties.
