Local Weather Forecast
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Complete Forecast for  Jul 24 2008

By ADAM RUSSELL
Staff Writer

Storm clouds produced a tornado Tuesday night, causing scattered damage throughout a 21-mile stretch from the eastern part of Longview to rural areas south of Kilgore.

National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist Keith Stellman said a combination of straight-force winds and an Enhanced Fujita class 0 tornado hit Longview around 9 p.m., with winds between 75 and 85 miles per hour.

High winds downed trees and power lines, signs and fences, and scattered debris throughout neighborhoods in a four-mile swath of the city. There were no injuries reported.

District Chief Johnny Zachary of the Longview Fire Department said most of the damage in the city was confined to an area between Fourth Street and North Eastman Road (U.S. Highway 259) and north of Marshall Street to Ruth Street. There was also limited damage north of East Cotton Street and south to Betty Drive and between Martin Luther King Boulevard and High Street.

One man escaped from his pickup before a tree, near the corner of Electra Street and Melton Street, fell into the cab, caving it in. Police said the man exited the vehicle on the passenger side just before the tree crushed his truck. He was not seriously injured.

Many houses were littered with limbs, large and small. In the 500 block of Sylvan Drive, a home's garage was caved in by a large limb.

A large oak tree fell across Young Street at Pool Drive. Cleanup crews arrived on scene a few hours later with large dirt-moving equipment to move the tree out of the road.

Gary Elliott said he was doing his laundry and heard the crackling and snapping of trees as the brunt of the storm passed over. He said he never heard the signature "freight train" sound a tornado makes and assumed high winds took it down. Winds blew a section of his backyard fence down and a large limb fell on his roof. Luckily, he said, another tree caught the limb before it could inflict maximum damage to his roof.

He did not get much sleep Tuesday night because of the cleanup and he has been unable to reach insurance adjusters about what to do with the toppled trees and limbs, he said.

"Everybody is trying to get things done and they're booked," he said with a shrug of his shoulders. "I don't know what we're going to do."

After the storm, residents around the city complained about the lack of warning. Many said sirens did not sound an alarm until after the storm had passed.

Public Safety Communications Manager Sally Rees confirmed there was a problem with the system Tuesday night. The computer used to activate the warning system crashed, she said. The software for the newly installed system was re-booted but did not respond, Ms. Rees said, forcing a re-boot of the entire system.

"There was an 11-minute delay from the time we received the printout from the weather service to the time we sounded the alarm," she said. "We've addressed the problem and we are talking to the manufacturer about finding a way to manually bypass the computer system."

Ms. Rees said the new computerized warning system was installed last year and has been tested with no problems. This was the improved system's first emergency situation, she said.

Stellman and another meteorologist visited Longview and the area south of Kilgore to assess damage and confirm the presence of the tornadoes.

As he walked amidst downed pine trees and the twisted remnants of a barn's tin roof south of Kilgore, he said the tornado hit the area as a class EF 1 tornado. The damage was limited to trees and the barn. A trailer, only 100 yards from the direct path stood undisturbed. A house and storage shed directly in the path did not show damage. Less than 75 yards from the house, a pine tree twisted and snapped, leaving a stump.

"We can't rate a tornado unless we go look at the damage, like in the past," he said. "This was definitely a tornado."

Stellman said EF 1 tornadoes rotate with 95 to 105 mile per hour winds. Stellman, who is based out of Shreveport, said he has investigated seven tornadoes since Jan. 28 and that Texas' tornado season will continue through mid-April.

After a late night that ended around 3 a.m. for Zachary, he gave the night's storm and the damage response perspective.

"It was a busy night," he said. "Lots of near misses."