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Texas Tornado Leaves 6 Dead, Dozens Hurt, Hundreds Homeless

Jose and Antonio Angudo were among those evacuated from Granbury, Texas, late Wednesday after a tornado devastated the area.
Joyce Marshall / Fort Worth Star-Telegram
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MCT / Landov
Jose and Antonio Angudo were among those evacuated from Granbury, Texas, late Wednesday after a tornado devastated the area.

"A massive emergency response" is underway in North Texas, where tornadoes blew through Wednesday night, The Dallas Morning News says. A twister that hit Granbury, about 35 miles southwest of Fort Worth, left at least six people dead, more than 100 injured and even more homeless, The Associated Press adds.

WFAA-TV says at least one neighborhood in Granbury is a "scene of complete devastation." The station was live blogging before, during and after the storms roared through. Early Thursday, it wrote that:

"We're walking through a residence near Cleburne that had its roof ripped off as a violent storm passed. Darrin Vasquez said it was 'loud and very violent' as the storm created a 'vacuum' that appeared to be lifting everything up. 'Thank God we're all right. We all said our prayers,' Vasquez said. He used a mattress to shield his family from debris in a bathroom of their home."

According to CBS Dallas, "the tornado was part of a system of severe thunderstorms that spawned several tornadoes across North Texas, dropping large hail in some areas. The National Weather Service estimates at least 10 tornadoes touched down."

As Thursday dawned, rescuers were continuing to search for more than a dozen people.

"It was like hell," one woman says in this video posted by CBS News. In an Associated Press video, a witness describes hail the size of softballs.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.