The City of Perryton was hit with an F3 tornado last Thursday, the 15th at 5:08. The downtown, what was once a booming part of the city, took the brunt of the effects from the tornado. In an odd pattern, the tornado traveled from North West to South East. The town was given no warning in the unfortunate circumstances. City Manager, David Landis gave insight into the moments before it struck.
“Never in my 40 years as city manager have I closed before 5 pm,” Landis said. “But something was telling me on Thursday to send everyone home. A quarter till 5, I told everyone to get home because we had severe weather coming. All weather services were forecasting severe weather. We didn’t know about the tornado, we were under a tornado watch but no warning. We knew we had bad weather coming. Had it been 20 minutes later, I believe we would’ve had more lives lost from people leaving work and headed home.”
The trigger points for the storm warning sirens are when a tornado has been spotted, or when the national weather service issues a tornado warning headed to Perryton. The forecasting went from watch to warning, when it went to warning the only person left at city hall was a dispatcher. When the dispatcher went to activate the warning sirens, the tornado hit and wiped out electricity, giving the city no ability to give a warning.
“We spoke to storm-chasers that were here, one of which has 21 years of experience in the field,” Landis said. “Never in his 21 years of working in the field has he seen a genesis of a tornado span as rapidly as this one did.”
As of now, there are three confirmed lives lost from the tornado, with the Ochiltree County Hospital treating over 100 patients following the event. Immediately after the storm, city officials and first responders began work on what was there. Effectively since the following of the storm, they have been working around the clock since Thursday evening.
“We’ve had breaks, times to go home, but there has always been action and working going on since that point in time,” Landis said. “We have been working out of the starting gates of a very long marathon, trying to rebuild and take care of our citizens and deal with the grieving process and financial cost to the community.”
The city has been affected in many ways. Every operation the City of Perryton has on the government level has been wiped out aside from a few parks and the golf course. The tornado took out the public works barn and warehouse and repair shop, which housed the trash trucks, heavy equipment vehicles, and supplies. City Hall houses the fire department, ems, police department, and city billing and administration.
“We, as of now, have no way to operate,” Landis said. “We are relying on volunteers from state agencies to help us accomplish our essential services. We are working on telecommunications and internet services so we can resume some sense of normalcy. As of June 20th, day 5 after the tornado, we have no electronic infrastructure to accomplish the bare essentials we need such as collecting utility bills or payroll, that was wiped out.”
As of now, the City of Perryton believes there are 88 homes and businesses destroyed. With 65 having significant damage, 57 with minor damage, and an additional 46 being affected. Wiping out roughly 1.5 square miles of a 4 and 3/4 square mile community. The loss of electricity has affected the courthouse, rendering those employees without a place to work out of. For the time being, most city and county offices are being housed in the law enforcement center. The Texas Division of Emergency Management was quickly sent into the city with multiple agents now stationed in Perryton.
“The outpour of support has been overwhelming,” Landis said. “We have TDEM, Forest Service, DPS, TxDot, and TCEQ, I can’t even name them all. There have been hundreds here to help. The City of Perryton is the pilot in command, but these agencies have come in with a clear mind and are aiding us in making decisions more level-headed as we navigate this disaster. Governor Abbot was here Saturday the 17th and declared this a disaster, we had Senator Ted Cruz here as well. There is purpose in having these people respond and check in with us, the national attention has helped so much as we try to rebuild. In addition to the state agencies, there have to be thousands of people helping this community. Every agency has stated that they cannot believe how Perryton people are helping Perryton people. They’ve told us they are used to disaster areas having folks waiting for the government to come in and help. We always help our own.”
The volunteers have flooded in from all over. The firetrucks for the city were wiped out, surrounding counties have donated trucks for the time needed to continue to protect the community, with services from Lewisville and Corpus Christi.
“I am fairly well connected with the Texas city management association, so I know most of the city managers across Texas,” Landis said. “I can’t tell you how many calls and texts I’ve gotten in. From McAllen asking what they need me to bring here, to Corpus Christi bringing up as much support as they can. We are one of the reddest political communities, but at this moment, it doesn’t matter about political parties, this is Texans helping Texans. It gets me choked up thinking about it and seeing the support and outpour we’ve gotten from state and national volunteers.”
Driving through town, on every corner of the city is agencies from all over the nation set up to provide different services. Matthew 25 Ministers, from Cincinnati, Ohio sent in two divisions of their services. One is their Tide ‘Loads of Love’ and Duracell ‘Power Forward’ trucks, providing laundry services to the community and all kinds of battery and energy needs. The community of Perryton has changed from ‘me and I’ to ‘us and we’ in the aftermath, coming together to help one another.
“We don’t need food or water or furniture and clothing, we are so full on those items,” Landis said. “We have received so much, we haven’t even been able to begin giving it out yet. We’ve had community members donate warehouses to hold all of this stuff for us. What people, the victims, need at this time is monetary donations. They are in need of help with their rebuilds and getting back on their feet. We are asking people that want to donate now, to contact one of our four local banks and the donations will go directly to the victims. The victims have lost everything, they have nothing left. No homes, clothes, cars, history of their family or credentials, they have nothing.”
Some churches were damaged, or left unusable from the storm. But, Sunday morning continued on as normal.
“It’s amazing, there were two churches affected,” Landis said. “I wasn’t able to attend church for obvious reasons, but every church in town is gathering. Doing the Christian thing, we have churches setting up daycares, showers, shelters, or places to eat. We have one church in town that is producing 25,000 meals a day for the community, in a town of 9,000, we have so much food that has come in. We have people in town that are taking the meat that has come in and are setting up smokers and cooking that meat, and it’s open to anyone in need. It’s a walk-up, and we’re going to take care of your type of thing.”
The city, as of now, has no natural gas. Throughout the city, there is no natural gas, which provides hot water or the ability to use a gas stove. The tornado affected the lining of the natural gas systems throughout the town, with a time span of reopening the lines at the earliest of six months.
“The tornado, when it ripped through, pulled something that essentially left us leaking natural gas into the open air,” Landis said. “For safety and precaution, we shut those lines off until we can get those things repaired and restored.”
The projection of full restoration is years, spans of years before the city fully recovers.
“We may have structures that are salvageable back in two or three years, but we can’t say,” Landis said. “But our downtown was a very dynamic and prosperous main street, that will take a long time to get back. The natural gas being off affects restaurants from opening, cooking, or the hot water to sanitize. There’s no hot water in town unless you have an electric water heater. We continue to go step by step, but the restoration of the natural gas is top of the list to get this city back up and running.”
To donate to the victims of Perryton, contact one of the local banks in Perryton and the donations will be given to victims directly. The City of Perryton will continue taking the next step towards getting back to where they were before the tragic events on the 15th.
